How to Scope an Instructional Design Project

So, you’re about to kick off the start of your first instructional design project, and you’ve been tasked with defining the project deliverables, timelines, requirements, and constraints. Feeling overwhelmed yet?!

Well, the truth is, there’s a lot that goes into properly scoping an instructional design project. From conducting a thorough needs analysis to defining project deliverables and timelines, scoping a project involves careful planning and communication. And whether you're creating a single eLearning course, developing an instructor-led workshop, or designing a blended training experience, understanding how to scope your project will save you time, reduce potential conflicts, and increase the likelihood of delivering a high-quality and on-time instructional solution.

In this article, we’ll walk through the key elements and variables that you need to consider when scoping an instructional design project. We’ll also look at some practical tips about avoiding and managing scope creep.

Step 1: Schedule a Kickoff Meeting

The first step for scoping an instructional design project is to schedule and conduct a kickoff meeting with your stakeholders, subject matter experts, and anyone else involved in the project.

Kickoff meetings are a critical step for any instructional design project, as they allow you to bring together everyone involved in the project and ensure everyone is on the same page regarding the project's goals, objectives, and expected outcomes. This alignment helps prevent misunderstandings and conflicts later in the project and allows you the opportunity to clarify roles and responsibilities, which is essential for smooth project execution.

Beyond helping you start the process of scoping your instructional design project, kickoff meetings are a great opportunity to help you educate your stakeholders and SMEs about what to expect at each stage of the instructional design and development process, whether you’re following the ADDIE or SAM model.

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Step 2: Conduct a Needs Analysis

The second step for scoping an instructional design project is to conduct a needs analysis. While you may have walked away from your kickoff meeting with a better understanding of the problem(s) your stakeholders and SMEs want to solve and the goals they want to achieve, you also need to understand the root causes of those issues.

The goal of a needs analysis is to understand why a performance issue exists and whether it’s due to a lack of knowledge, skills, motivation, or resources within the performance environment (or a combination of these things). With this information, you can then make informed recommendations about what training or non-training interventions can help solve the observed issues or achieve the desired goals.

Now, how a needs analysis relates to scoping your instructional design project is that your recommendations will give you and your stakeholders a snapshot view of the level of effort required to meet their goals.

Step 3: Define the Deliverables, Requirements & Costs

After conducting a needs analysis, the third step for scoping an instructional design project is to define the deliverables, including the requirements and potential costs associated with creating those deliverables.

Whether you’re planning to develop a single training object or a fully blended training curriculum, it’s important to have a clear and well-defined list of what will be delivered at the end of the project. You can then use this information to reverse engineer the requirements and costs necessary to create them. For example, a project that will result in a single eLearning course will have a vastly different set of requirements and costs than a project that involves the delivery of a multi-day or multi-month instructor-led training with materials, handouts, etc.

After you’ve defined the deliverables, you also want to define the requirements and costs needed to create those deliverables. For example, if you’re creating an asynchronous, interactive eLearning course, the requirements and costs may include:

  • Source content and materials from a subject matter expert to develop the content

  • Access to an eLearning authoring tool, like Articulate Storyline or Rise, to develop the course

  • Graphic assets and/or style guide to design the course

  • LMS to publish and distribute the course

Some of these requirements may or may not have direct costs associated with them. For example, if you already have access to an eLearning authoring tool, then there’s no project-related cost to use it. However, if the project requires voice-over narration, you may need to budget or account for the cost of having the narration recorded or the cost of obtaining AI-generated audio narration.

In other instances, the cost may simply be the use of another person’s time dedicated to the project. For example, the time needed from a subject matter expert to help you develop and review the content or the time needed from an LMS admin to publish and distribute the course.

The point is every project is different, and the requirements and costs for a given project are dependent on the deliverables and what tools/resources are available to you. If you’re not sure how to transition from your needs analysis to a list of deliverables, creating an action map is a great way to get started with this process.

Step 4: Identify the Constraints & Risks

In addition to defining the deliverables, requirements, and costs associated with your project, the fourth step for scoping an instructional design project is to identify the constraints and risks.

To put it simply, a constraint or risk is anything that may prevent you from successfully delivering the project on time and/or within budget. And every project, regardless of how well-planned it may be, will experience roadblocks and hiccups along the way. The goal of good project management and properly scoping the project is to proactively identify and avoid these roadblocks and hiccups before they happen.

Most constraints and risks fall into three categories:

  • Time Constraint: Depending on the total scope vs. the deadline (plus other projects you may be working on, availability of other project contributors, etc.), this may constrain how much time you have to dedicate to the project and put meeting your deadline at risk.

  • Cost Constraint: Depending on the requirements of the project, you may run into cost constraints if the desired deliverables exceed the available budget needed to develop them. This could be the cost of a specific tool, assets, or people to execute the project.

  • Scope Constraint: Depending on how the project progresses, edits, review cycles, and requests can push the project beyond the initially planned scope. This is known as scope creep, which can create a domino effect, spurring unexpected time or cost risks.

While it’s always ideal to find solutions for avoiding these constraints and risks during the planning stages of your instructional design project, not all constraints or risks can be mitigated. In those instances, you’ll want to work with your stakeholders to make necessary adjustments. This might involve adjusting the deadline, budget, or scope.

Step 5: Create a Project Timeline

The next step in the process of scoping your instructional design project is to create a timeline. Everything you’ve defined up to this point—your project deliverables, requirements, constraints, etc.—contribute to the creation of your timeline.

While there are many different formats and tools you can use to create a project timeline, the goal is to reverse-engineer your project into individual tasks and sub-tasks for which you can assign due dates, owner(s), and dependencies.

  • Task: The individual step or task to be completed.

  • Due date: The date on which the task is due.

  • Owner: The person(s) responsible for completing the task.

  • Dependency: The relationship between two or more tasks, where one task must be completed before subsequent tasks can proceed.

The truth is that your project timeline is the primary tool you’ll use to manage the day-to-day aspects of your project, as it can give you an on-the-spot measure of whether the project is on track, delayed, or ahead of schedule. And because the project is broken down into individual tasks, you can quickly react to tasks that are behind or outstanding.

When creating a timeline, you may wonder how to estimate how much time it’ll take to complete any particular task. How long does it take to write a storyboard? How long does it take to develop a course in Articulate Storyline? How long does it take to create a one-hour instructor-led training? While there are some methods, calculators, and strategies for estimating project time, it will often feel like a shot in the dark the first couple of times. There’s no exact science to estimating project time—it’s about leaning on your experience and making the best-educated guestimate.

Step 6: Create a Design Document

The sixth and final step for scoping your project is to document everything in an instructional design document. After you’ve spent a ton of time scoping your project, the worst thing you can do is fail to document it! And trust me, when one of your stakeholders or subject matter experts tries to ask for something that’s outside the scope of the project (and they will), you want to have all of your documentation to fall back on.

An instructional design document is like a project plan, which outlines everything you and your stakeholders and subject matter experts decided and agreed upon in the previous steps before you begin development, including what is being delivered, who is involved, and when the project aims to be completed.

Ultimately, your design document becomes the “source of truth” for everything and everyone involved in the project.

What about Scope Creep?

Taking the time to carefully scope your instructional design project is an important part of managing your project. However, no matter how much you plan every small detail, it’s always possible for scope creep to “creep” its way in.

While there’s a lot you can do to avoid and manage scope creep, your best bet is to anticipate and know that there’s always going to be some creep in the scope of your project. And it’s for these reasons that it’s always a good idea to build a little extra time into your project timeline.

The Bottom Line

While it seems like a daunting and time-consuming process to scope an instructional design project, it can save you a lot of time (and headaches) in the long run! Taking the time to fully plan the level of effort needed for your project and making sure your stakeholders and SMEs understand it can help keep your instructional design project on time and within budget.

So, what other tips or questions do you have for scoping an ID project? Share them by commenting below!