Effective elearning project management – communication is key

This primarily involves informing the project team as to the scope and task which needs to be completed, as well as setting a specific line of communication between all stakeholders at the beginning of each project. By establishing communication methods such as email, phone or instant messaging early on, this ensures a much smoother project throughout.

Establishing the clients’ requirements within the initial stages is also key to ensuring that the project meets expectations before progressing through to development stage. Effective communication between the project manager and all stakeholders will therefore enable the project to be in line with the original scope.

The project manager will also need to outline to the client how feedback is to be received within the design and development process, so that issue tracking can be put in place to assist with ascertaining and resolving unanticipated issues.

Lastly, being proactive and ensuring that corrective actions are taken as soon as possible are crucial to the development of the content. This provides the client with confidence in the project manager’s ability to progress forward with the project.

Communication is key

Key communication methods which project managers should put in place to ensure the success of any elearning project are:

• Ensuring that weekly project calls are set up at the beginning of a project, as well as sending out detailed agendas before weekly calls. This puts clear communication guidelines in place so that everyone knows what to expect.
• Ensuring that weekly resource meetings occur, to enable discussion with managers/ other project managers with regards to potential resource conflicts. By ensuring resources are booked in then this also communicates a daily report to the relevant resource.
• Building up a good working relationship with both internal and external stakeholders to ensure both project success and repeat business from clients.
• Touching base with internal resources on a daily basis to check as to progress status.
• Ensuring that resources talk to one another, especially at key points within a project (i.e. Instructional Designers and Developers at Content Outline and Storyboard stage).
• Showing initiative to set up ad hoc calls with clients via conference call or video conferencing. The project manager will need to judge as to whether to invite any internal resources.
• Using collaborative communication tools such as Skype and Slack to achieve more fluid communication with internal resources. These online outlets give you the power to collaborate with team members from anywhere in the world, as well as provide immediate feedback and make necessary revisions.
• Communicating any issues to manager/ sales manager and escalate this when necessary to ensure that issues are resolved with quickly/ professionally, so as to limit any potential scope creep/ client dissatisfaction.
• Setting the client’s project up with access to a tracking tool, such as JIRA, to ensure that client feedback is captured, updated and quality checked.

By achieving the above communication methods, this will enable a project to succeed with regards to project scope, quality, budget and timeliness. Most important this contributes to building good relationships with internal and external stakeholders, as well as continued repeat business from clients.

Written by Mara Swann

Mara has a passion for promoting equity, diversity, and inclusion across global workplaces and hopes to inspire learners to focus on their own careers with self-directed learning content.

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