That is a question that is often asked in one or two of the training forums that I visit occasionally. Unfortunately, the question falls into the unknowable category much like the question, “How long is a piece of string?” Equally unfortunate is that respondents give answers that are wild guesses; They have ranged from 40 hours per one hour of training to various nominal percentages over the past six months.
As human beings, we like to put everything in quantifiable or qualitative boxes … neat little boxes with familiar, comfortable dimensions. We can feel safe and protected with quantities or qualities that we can understand and control. Of course, it is true that we also have to face the practical need to allocate costs to activities, and therefore we need to know how long these activities take. We need to know how much we must pay a specialist to develop a program. At best, there is always a great deal of guesswork. The guesswork occurs because of the large number of variables that are added in any instructional design activity. For example, how much content must be covered to achieve the learning outcomes of the program? What is the acceptance rate expected by the proposed audience? How will it be delivered (interventions for classroom delivery are less labor intensive than, for example, e-learning designs)?
There are not only structural variables, there are also variables related to the instructional designer or the design team. People with extensive content knowledge in a specific area can produce tiered instruction much more easily than someone with less extensive knowledge. Often times, it is necessary to identify one or more subject matter experts to tell instructional designers how content knowledge, skills, or attitudes are applied in the workplace.
My experience has been that while it is nearly impossible to determine precisely how long a training activity (a background one) will take to develop, there are a few ways in which an estimate can be more reliable. Some of the following methods can help.
Based on past experience, calculate costs on averages or work on maximums. That is, if it took 10 hours on average to design a variety of instructional programs, it is a reasonable proposition that it will take about 10 hours to design something similar. When estimating, it is always better to err at a higher cost. Therefore, instead of using average times for development, if you use maxima, your calculations may have some lag slack. If you were considering averaging, you would choose the maximum duration from the list of programs that are used to calculate the average and use it.
It is also possible to assign the hours and then design instructions to fit the time available. This can be risky, but it is not as unprofessional as it may seem at first. Let’s say, for example, that an hour had been allocated for everyone in an organization to receive an update on occupational safety and health issues. Perhaps a suitable delivery strategy could be “show and tell” with a brochure provided at the end for further consolidation. I have always held the view that “chalk and talk” presentation methods are not “training” because they lack a form of evaluation; we do not know if the participants have learned what was intended. However, sometimes this type of presentation can be helpful and it is difficult to argue that people are not leaving with knowledge they did not have when they arrived.
A third method is to ask someone who has completed a similar project how long it took. This may be a rough guide, but it is often more helpful than guessing without any real justification for doing so.
As a training manager, when I calculated my annual budget, I included a global figure for development if I did it separately, or I included a charge on my training delivery costs of, say, 25%. The overall development figure was a maximum that I had calculated in previous design activities. Typically, my team would overspend on one activity and less on the next, and when the budget ran out, we had the option of canceling other planned training activities and redirecting funds, not developing more activities for the year, or submitting a Business case. to our Finance Department for additional funds.
The message of this article, then, is not to blindly follow the hours, percentages, or other information that people talk about in training forums, often with the conviction that they are “standard”, “industry accepted” or any other thing. Do your own research and come up with estimates that follow the sets of variables that exist in your internal and external environments.
A well thought out training proposal (or outline) can be of great help in estimating development costs because it focuses on the facts, e.g. target audience, learning outcomes, duration of training, method of delivery and much more. This is the data that informs your instructional design team. An added bonus is that if your training proposal is approved by a funding delegate, your design and development estimate is more likely to be approved as well.
Published May 2005. Copyright Robin Henry 2005