Agile Project Management in e-Learning

Megan Torrance's ATD article Demystifying Agile in Instructional Design is an excellent think piece on agile in instructional design. A famous car company ended my relationship with them as a client in part because I said Agile and instructional design are incompatible.

I was wrong about that. But equally wrong is the wholesale, square peg in round hole effort by people in love with agile in software development to force e-Learning into the mold. 

Here's a summary of differences according to Torrance:

• Objectives and performance outcomes are as important as functions and features.
• Instructional designers (IDs) tend to work on multiple projects at once whereas software developers tend to work on a single project to the exclusion of all else. Even within a large project with several smaller projects that dovetail into it - it's still multiple small projects, each with tasks, each with a story, each with sprints. Not the same as software development whereby you're working on as single product or set of features for NOW.
• IDs are at the mercy of subject matter experts. They can't sit in a JAD session and work with a SME because the SME may have other, more important fish to fry. I've seen e-Learning developers swear they're going to have a talk with the SMEs manager. Sometimes that works. Sometimes it doesn't. Mostly it doesn't. When a topic is highly technical or there isn't any documentation to get an ID started they may not get far at all. That defeats the whole Agile methodology.

I'd like to add a few more differences:

• Non-academic content can be thought of as features and functions because that content is a bit more amenable to packaging in ways that are similar to software.
• Academic content is often more fluid or perhaps has objectives that are tougher to define. This causes issues when matching content to outcomes that are harder to define. The content doesn't match precisely or requires enhancement and that slows things down.
• Agile focuses on getting it done. Defining a project using stories nails down the project. Stories are tougher for some kinds of e-Learning for instance. How do you nail down say Improving Interpersonal Communications Skills. The stories might take in some but not all of the skills required for a learner because the stories are inadequate. 
• When we develop with inadequate stories in software features and benefits they can be worked out as you go along. If you produce a course that does not meet learner requirements in academia the consequences can be serious.

Demystifying Agile in Instruction Design, Torrance, Megan, March 7, 2018 https://www.td.org/insights/demystifying-agile-in-instructional-design