Rapid Content Development
I executeda solo project recently to transform a highly technical instructor-led session to a self-serve learning pathway. The intent was to decrease dependence on a specific team and lower the amount of support tickets to which they had to respond. The words rapid, quick, and fast were used many times during the kickoff meeting, so it became clear speed was a priority.
Some project context: The existing session was focused on information for troubleshooting. The team in high-demand needed resources where they could direct people to help themselves, so I chose the approach of building quick reference guides for troubleshooting common issues.
When you are on a project with constraints, something’s gotta give. I had a lot of content to deliver in one month. Here are the ways I was able to deliver an entire learning pathway covering 12 topics in less than a month:
Reuse content when it’s available. I spliced up some recordings from sessions that were previously delivered by SMEs and made bite-size explainer videos. This saved me time from having to write a script and capture screen recordings.
Create repeatable templates. I built an infographic template in Canva and microlearning template in Rise that I could duplicated for each asset in the learning pathway.
Develop in iterative weekly batches. This kept the project agile and maintained momentum.
Expedite the review process. Normally, I go through edit, QA, SME review, UAT, and a final edit, but because this project was internal, I negotiated a reduction to edit, QA, and SME review which shaved weeks off the timeline.
Schedule reminders to send out batches for feedback. Reviewers heard from me at the beginning of each week with an email requesting comments, and then got a friendly nudge Friday morning if they still needed to respond. This made sure no content got left behind in review.
Happy to share that the self-serve learning pathway went live in just under a month. It’s chock full of resources that individuals can refer to if they have questions, like quick reference guides, infographic, process documents, how-tos, and explainer videos. If they still can’t figure it out, there are forms to submit support tickets in the pathway as well, although we anticipate those numbers will decrease drastically.
