Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

This week’s course focus is on budgeting; specifically, estimating costs and allocating resources as it relates to project management. This has been one of the most difficult aspects for me to tackle, because I haven’t had any prior experience in project management. The only budgeting experience I have is in my personal life.  However, once again the internet comes to the rescue, with a wide range of resources that are helpful in estimating cost, effort, and time involved in various instructional design projects.  Here are two of the most helpful resources I came across:

http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training

Dr. Karl Kapp and Robyn A Defelice published an article on estimating time for ID projects. The authors conducted a survey of ID professionals, and compiled the results in a table that gives low and high estimates for the time needed to develop one hour of instruction with several variables. The study was repeated in 2009, and the above link contains results from both surveys.  I also found this article useful because the authors discuss in detail some of the factors that affect development time.

http://www.elearningguild.com/pdf/1/time%20to%20develop%20Survey.pdf

The e-Learning Guild conducted a time ratio survey in 2002, and the above link is a compilation of the results. While my first thought is that the estimates are outdated, I actually found similarities between this study and the one conducted by Kapp and Defelice. I thought this resource was particularly useful because rather than estimating by the hour, it focuses on per-minute student learning objects. My course project focuses on small digital learning objects, so the per-hour estimates were proving to be difficult for me to use when working on my project.