What’s the budget?

Effective project budgeting and management are essential for the success of any project. Whether you’re working on a small-scale instructional design project or a large-scale construction project, accurate budgeting and management can help ensure that you stay on track, meet your goals, and deliver a quality product on time and within budget. However, project budgeting and management can be complex and challenging, requiring careful planning, attention to detail, and the use of effective tools and strategies. In this blog post, I will explore some key tips and strategies for mastering the art of project budgeting and management, with a focus on instructional design projects. We will also provide some useful resources and tools that you can use to help plan your next project and ensure its success.

Here are two resources that could be useful in estimating costs, effort, and activity durations associated with instructional design (ID) projects:

1. ATD Learning System: The Association for Talent Development (ATD) offers a learning system that provides comprehensive resources on instructional design, including estimating costs, effort, and activity durations (Gupta et al., n.d.). The system includes a variety of tools and templates for planning, managing, and evaluating ID projects. These resources can be used to help plan a project’s schedule, budget or break down a project’s tasks.
2. eLearning Industry: eLearning Industry is a website that offers a range of resources related to eLearning, including instructional design (eLearning Industry, 2022). The site includes articles, whitepapers, and other resources on various topics related to instructional design, including project planning, budgeting, and management. eLearning Industry also offers a directory of eLearning vendors, which can be useful for finding tools and services to support your instructional design project. For example, here is a post about using cost-benefit analysis strategies instead of training ROI (Pangarkar, 2023).

To use these resources effectively, instructional designers could start by reviewing the resources available on each site and identifying the tools and templates that would be most useful for their specific project. They could then use these resources to create a project plan that includes estimated costs, effort, and activity durations for each task in the project. By breaking down the project into manageable tasks and estimating the time and resources required for each task, instructional designers can create a more accurate and realistic project plan that can help ensure project success.

References

About Elearning Industry. eLearning Industry. (2022). Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/about-us.

Gupta, G., Cohen, S. L., Alexander, M., Reichel-Howe, L., & Bakker, J. (n.d.). ATD: The World’s Largest Talent Development Association: ATD. About Us. Retrieved from https://www.td.org/about.

Pangarkar, A. (2023). Stop using training ROI; start measuring cost-benefit. eLearning Industry. Retrieved from https://elearningindustry.com/stop-using-training-roi-start-measuring-cost-benefit.