ADDIE vs SAM

Hey Jack. I think the cost of iterations is likely hard to make a general estimate for. If a client is fully on board with SAM and you all followed the recommended number of iterations in each section of the process, there's enough structure in it (in particular, with SAM 2) that you could set up a Gantt chart and actually map out the time for each step, making it easier to estimate the costs. But that's in an ideal situation where you don't hit anything that delays the project. Of course, that's a risk with ADDIE as well.

I think there are two big factors that can make SAM less time and cost-intensive. First, putting some parameters around how long you spend in each step or how many iterative loops is your maximum number helps a lot. Just because there are iterations involved doesn't mean it's unlimited iterations. And you do need to be careful about not continuing to iterate just for tiny improvements that don't matter much in the long run. Second, some of this is just going to take practice to fine-tune. Chances are your first time using any project management technique is going to take a bit longer and be a bit bumpier the first time through, but will be substantially faster once you and your stakeholders/clients have gone through it a few times.

If you want to really dig into the structure of how both SAM1 and SAM2 work, this article from Allen Interactions is a great deep dive.