Have you got questions about managing an e-learning project? Do you struggle to determine how long it will take to develop a course? Need help identifying project constraints? Looking for tips about how to maximize your limited time with subject matter experts (SMEs)? For help with all these and more, come join us for Articulate’s next live Ask Me Anything (AMA) event with community manager Trina Rimmer.

Trina has years of experience as a consultant managing e-learning projects from start to finish, and she has a special area of expertise: working with SMEs. Trina will be ready and able to answer your questions live on Wednesday, March 18, 2015, from 1-3 PM ET.

How You Can Take Part

Mark the event date in your calendar and visit this page when the event begins at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET on Wednesday, March 18. When the live event starts, you’ll be able to post your questions for Trina in the comments. Trina will answer as many questions as possible during the session, starting with the most popular ones. Use the Like button to show Trina which questions you want to see answered.

We hope you’ll join us for our next AMA. Remember to follow #ArticulateAMA on Twitter for the latest updates about the event. Hope to see you there!

***POST-EVENT UPDATE*** Thanks so much for all the great questions, community peeps! Please feel free to continue the conversation in the comments. And if you have more questions, just post them in our forums and the community will chime in.

We’re excited to announce our next Articulate AMA. Mike Enders from the Marketing and Community Team will answer all of your questions about audio and video production on Wednesday, April 15 from 1-3 pm EST. Mike makes tons of amazing tutorials (like this one) and he’ll have lots of great pro tips to share. Mark your calendar!

And don't forget to follow #ArticulateAMA on Twitter for all the latest news and updates!

58 Comments
Montse
Trina Rimmer
Trina Rimmer
Trina Rimmer

Sure thing, Danika. The closest thing I think our industry has to a "standard" for development ratios is probably the Chapman Alliance data: http://www.slideshare.net/bchapman_utah/how-long-does-it-take-to-create-learning In practice, I found that it was easier to keep track of my hours on every project. I started doing this even before I became a freelancer because it gave me a better way to justify the time I needed to get my work done. The nice thing about tracking your time for projects is that, after a while, you end up with some nice benchmarking data that speaks to how long it takes YOU to create different levels of e-learning. There are tons of free time tracking tools on the web that can help you do this if it's something you'd like to undertake, but Toggl (https://www.toggl.co... Expand

Tom Kuhlmann
Trina Rimmer
Trina Rimmer
Lynette Sawyer

Hi Jeff, I hope y'all don't mind if I jump in and comment on this one because I have had this challenge myself! What I've learned is that it's important for me to get a realistic idea of where this item happens to fall on the SME's priority list. For example, a VP of Sales has anything close to the dollar at the top of their priority list and anything non-revenue generating is closer to the bottom. How do I remedy that? By stating that very fact at the outset - along with a value proposition (i.e. the reason this needs to be closer to the top of their list), getting their agreement and then referring back to that conversation if the SME begins to fall off schedule. It's a fairly easy conversation to have: "At the beginning of our process I said to you.......you agreed it needs to be h... Expand

Steffanie Hobelman
Trina Rimmer
Steffanie Hobelman
Leslie Therese Blanton
Trina Rimmer

Hi Leslie! Nice to see you weighing in. Thanks for finding time in your busy schedule to drop by. :-) So I think the key words for me in your explanation were "unique but not conflicting." In my experience, pitfalls happen when people think that unique is bad, a waste of time, a conflict, or that it adds needless complexity. But you and I know that unique is actually wonderful, because a variety of perspectives can be really helpful for narrowing in on the best approach. Even the most unique perspectives will share some common goals, so I think pulling the team together and having an honest conversation about the common goals keeps everyone on the same page. Getting your leaders - the Happiness Expert and the Training Manager - to agree to provide a unified message around the goals of t... Expand

Trina Rimmer

Boy Tracy, the urge to constantly rework is something I think we've all run into. You're a one-person L&D department, right? For you I can see that moving a project from start to finish in an efficient manner, is really important since you've got a fairly stacked queue of work. Finding out which stakeholder is the key decision-maker for your project and getting them on board with your timeline early on, is probably the most important way to prevent that kind of tinkering from going on. Without someone to help you draw that line in the sand, it makes it hard to push things across the finish line. I also like to talk about what will happen if we DON'T deliver according to our timeline so people can see what the consequences are of delays - e.g. lost revenue, increased risk to the org, etc... Expand

Richard Watson
Steffanie Hobelman
Trina Rimmer
Rita Garcia
Trina Rimmer
Tom Kuhlmann
Trina Rimmer
Veronica Budnikas
Trina Rimmer

Great question, Veronica. I agree with the author you've referenced and in recent years I shifted my business from a time-based model to a value-based one. That being said, I learned this the hard way. At the end of the day, most companies just want you to either cough up an hourly rate or a flat rate quote. Depending on what the client wants, I would offer up my pricing in one of those two formats and usually frame them around my larger recommendations for the project - either good/better/best or low/med/high solutions. If my pricing came up for debate, I would talk about my experience. I found that the point of "you're not buying an hour of my time, you're buying nearly 15 years of experience" was something that resonated with most of my clients and a good way to reframe the conversat... Expand

Trina Rimmer

That's a great question, Tom. The first thing I learned when I started out was that I was too focused on trying to look like a bargain-priced option. This worked for a while, but the business I was getting was very one-off and transactional and I had to do a TON of work to make ends meet. I wanted clients that would give me repeat business so I learned pretty quickly to price myself much higher. I did the math and took the annual salary I wanted to make, the hours I wanted to work per week, and adjusted that pricing to account for health insurance, savings, taxes, etc. until I arrived at an hourly rate. Even if clients wanted a flat rate quote from me, I would still use that hourly rate to compute my fees. My biggest pieces of advice to new freelancers: 1) You're going to price stuff w... Expand

Jackie Van Nice
Richard Watson
Trina Rimmer
Nicole Legault
Trina Rimmer