Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

I suppose we’ve all experienced times in our lives when we thought – or just plain knew – we were in over our heads.  That’s the situation I find myself in with the idea of project management and this week’s topic of establishing and managing a budget.  Of course, there isn’t the need for panic (yet) but it makes clear the realization that experience plays a big part in a sink or swim situation.

The situation also makes me realize that in terms of instructional strategy, it’s best to present the basics first but don’t provide variants and alternatives until some experience is gained.  This is the critical factor that makes reading either difficult or easy.  The main text for our course then, we might conclude, is oriented toward a reader with some background experience.  It requires careful reading to be able to learn all the differentiations being made in the stages of project management.  This seems especially true as it relates to the topic of estimating costs and building and controlling costs.

It’s natural then for a person to go to outside sources to supplement understanding the budget process and to actually construct a workable budget for an instructional design project or any project.  Through our various readings, we’ve gained a great deal of knowledge on the theory.  What we now need is practical information: what’s the going rate for hiring an SME or ID or PM?  How much time should it take to accomplish a design project?  And we could also use a software program that would allow us to plug in data and then provide us with information on time and amounts.

I’ll direct you to a website that I’ve used before as a source for many other courses in the instructional design master’s program.  Despite its name, Big Dog & Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition, this website is truly comprehensive covering many topics in the field of instructional design.  The title is an allusion to an Ogden Nash poem about dogs and doors suggesting that the site is a doorway to information “related to improving human performance.”  The site is developed by a professional in the instructional design field Don Clark with a cadre of writers and designers.

For  our journey through the trials of budget building and control, the website provides the article Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design   which provides dollar value and time value information to help a novice project manager develop a budget for an instructional design project.  No one is saying that the exact numbers and ratios should be taken as gospel truth.  Even Michael Greer, author of the PM Minimalist reference we are reading from each week, declares in his PM Resource  website that ratios need to be taken with a grain of salt.

In the area of cost estimating tools, I was directed to an article written by three professors at nearby Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia.  Their article Using a Web-based System to Estimate the Cost of Online Course Production  describes a pricing model called Asynchronous Pricing Model (APM).  The university has developed an online tool to “determine the estimated online costs involved in online course development” (2009).  The tool is essentially an interactive spreadsheet.  The tool considers categories which are indicative of online education: design, interface, text, graphics, photographs, animation, audio, video, assessment, LMS, and deliverables.  The process essentially provides a step-by-step guide “to quickly build cost estimates for online courses” (2009).  

With resources such as Don Clark’s website and the ODU online estimating tool, this phase of the management process can quickly appear less an insurmountable obstacle but a more manageable mountain.  Nothing can substitute for experience, but these resources can go a long way toward unraveling the complexity of developing a budget that won’t get rejected and that can work.

References:

Clark, D. (2011).  Estimating costs and time in instructional design.  Retrieved from Big Dog
& Little Dog’s Performance Juxtaposition at         http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

Greer, M.  (2011).  Estimating instructional development (ID) time.  Retrieved from
Michael Greer’s PM Resources at http://michaelgreer.biz/?p=279

Gordon, S., He, W., & Abdous, M.  (2009).  Using a web-based system to estimate the cost
of online course production.  Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration. 12(3). 
Retrieved from http://www.itcnetwork.org/resources/articles-abstracts-and-  
research/265-using-a-web-based-system-to-estimate-the-cost-of-online-course- 
production.html?catid=48%3Alibrary-articles-abstracts-research