Estimating Cost and Allocating Resources

Estimating Costs and Allocating Resources

Helpful Resources

1.      Estimating Instructional Development (ID) Time

http://michaelgreer.biz/?p=279

This website features valuable tips concerning estimating time for instructional development projects such as: development time vs. training time, non-writing time vs. project time, and executing time spent. The most helpful thing to me about this resource how the author uses ratios to illustrate his points.

2.      Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html

This resource was great in providing an assortment of estimates for different ID tasks. Also this resource gives a clearer understanding of ratios that are most likely to be suitable for each task as well as including links to other resources such as cost estimation spreadsheets, stock photographs, and digital recordings

Effective Communication

Effective Communication

Communication is a vital factor in any project and especially in today’s workplace. Without effective communication ideas cannot properly be expressed, deadlines could not be met, basically people would not be able to do their jobs efficiently. This week , three different forms of communication in the workplace were examined . These modalities proved to be very informative about how communication can be effective.

Email

Although this is probably most common, email doesn’t show the appropriate urgency of meeting a deadline or show how a person really feels about a particular part of a project or any other job responsibility. Messages through email can be sent very quickly and through great distances without having the other person(s) in attendance.

Voicemail

Voicemails can help show a sense of urgency and convey a real sense of emotion but the delivery can be a problem. Voicemails are dependent upon when the other person checks the message and cannot be sent to more than one person at one time.

Face to Face Interaction

This modality is probably the most traditional method of transferring information. Through face to face interaction ideas, emotions, and importance can easily be transmitted. In the past, this form of communication was totally dependent upon having that other person(s) in your immediate presence, but through modern technology we can now send video messages as easily as we would an email.

Each of these modalities have their own strengths and weaknesses and depending on the situation each could effectively be used in any project.

Project "Post-Mortem"

The Wireless Company is a organization comprised of roughly a dozen cellular communication stores. Each store within this organization provides customers with a wide variety of services from prepaid to contract services, cellular devices, device accessories, and wireless internet service.

A short time ago, I had the distinct privilege of presenting both the store level employees and organization leads with strategies of how to effectively sell wireless internet service. This project included me as both the project manager and instructional designer. Also there were two subject matter experts that were readily available for the project. What I believed lead to the success of this project were two things: first, I conducted surveys from random employees within the company on challenges of selling wireless internet and effective means of guiding the conversation to the customer to the subject of wireless internet service; second, I conducted extensive research on the selling process in general drawing upon responses giving by the subject matter experts.

What would have made this project more successful would have been more time to complete the project rather than a couple of weeks. In the end, I was not dissatisfied with the final product and neither was the organization.

Welcome

Greetings,
Welcome to my blog. This blog is in extensive use within my master's program at Walden University. For now this blog will be used in conjunction with the course - Project Management. I look forward to traveling down this journey of learning with you.

Thanks,
Norris