So you have been hearing a lot about Reusability 2.0 and envisioning your organization implementing a single-source strategy in the very near future. But you are feeling a bit uncertain on how you are going to start a project like this and run it to completion in a way that maximizes your chances for success. Bearing that in mind, Xyleme has turned the microphone over to the experts on the subject.

Know that these are the people that have actually already gone through single-source implementations successfully and have the experience to provide a useful set of advice. Yes, go for Reusability 2.0, but listen to what these experts shared with us first:

Communicate early to set expectations right

A single-source implementation is not a one-off project. It is a paradigm shift for almost everyone involved, affecting directly and indirectly all aspects of learning production. Content authors, subject matter experts, instructional designers, management, and various stakeholders will all be witnessing major changes one way or another. What needs to be done before jumping into development is to gain a deeper understanding of what changes the affected parties will be experiencing and make sure they are prepared for them.

“It is crucial to communicate what changes each party should expect and what the benefits are of doing things in this new fashion. A person shifting to single-source authoring should start by having a full understanding of what will change so that he or she can effectively plan for addressing and controlling that change.”
Jeffrey Shank, Training Systems Integrator, Jeppesen

“Clearly set expectations with all of your stakeholders that things are going to change. The format of the existing content is going to change: wording and structure will be different. Where you had a paragraph you might now have a list, where you added transitions at the bottom, you would now need to add them at the top. So set the expectations that the richness of the content won’t change but the cosmetics and some of the wording might.”
Mary Miller, VP of Professional Services, AchieveGlobal

Be prepared to invest more now early on to gain more in the long term

Shifting to single-source is not going to be effective unless a change in thinking takes place up-front. The key item here would be the word “up-front”. When you are single-sourcing content, you need to think early on about your strategy, your plans for reuse, your way of content design, and your content management practices. Your designers shouldn’t think solely in sentences and paragraphs. They need to think about “once it is written, how am I going to use it for different outputs?” They need to come up with easy ways to reuse things in order to gain efficiencies and save time. One example would be writing content in bulleted lists so that it can be applied to a slide, a graphic, or a presentation. And this is an evolution in everyone’s way of thinking. So plan ahead for the transition and expect the long-term benefits.

“If you transition to single-source content design, you need a different mindset. You should understand that the single-source process is an evolutionary step for content development: organizational content restrictions vanish while materials become more dynamic. When don’t repurpose your content, you are forced to think in much more rigid terms, but when you single-source, you are able to open up to the limitless uses and design opportunities of content management. So, set aside your preconceptions of what single-sourcing is going to be like, and be open minded to the process. Though the initial effort is more than what you would traditionally invest, look at the long-term possibilities and benefits. That makes a difference.”
Skip Marshall, Director of eLearning, Intelladon

“Expect that the design and development time for new products and for transitioning will increase and plan for it. Have in mind that your designers need to go through a transient stage of how they should think when designing content. And it is going to take them a while to get their head about separating that content from the file that they are rendering. This is not an easy process so it is wise to prepare designers and plan for approximately 30% more time needed for a new development upfront."
Mary Miller

How to think through metadata

“The whole concept of metadata is new for most of our clients. There are very few that even understand the idea, so that by itself is a learning process for them.”

Skip Marshall

“Put more thought behind your planning. Carefully think through metadata. You need to consider the structure of each component to allow for different outputs. Think of what will be most effective and improve the speed to develop when you try to create a deliverable. You want to make sure that you are able to search for and find the elements and topics that you want, be it the topic level or an individual element. This way you can update it quickly and render exactly the output that you need. So you do have to put more thought behind it. If you over-metadata-tag it’s going to make it cluttered. You can think of this as a database so garbage in, garbage out.”

Mary Miller

“Do not just jump into development. Single-source authoring requires more analysis and design up-front to be the most valuable. With a solid foundation, you will be able to develop content without needing to stop in mid-stream to create or change schemas. Everyone will know what to expect, thereby avoiding potential delays and enabling the project to have a positive ROI. By taking the time to develop an authoring and re-use strategy at the beginning of the project, everything will be in place for a smooth development phase.”
Jeffrey Shank

“For one of our customers, we converted more than 90 learning modules within a matter of 8 to 10 weeks. If we look at the initial few modules we did, it was a much slower process, but as the standard fell into place, the integration and best practices of creating content fostered an extremely fast process.”
Skip Marshall

Plan for change management

A change management process will take place along with shifting to single-source. As this is a paradigm shift for everyone, proper change management is needed to ensure that you are on top of new processes and you are able to control the changes occurring.

“I strongly recommend having a good change management process in place. While one of the beauties of single-source authoring is the ability to make a single style change and have it automatically propagate across all documents using that style, this also introduces the risk that an uncontrolled change can have an unexpected and negative impact. By applying a robust change management process, you can ensure that you know what will be impacted and can communicate and educate the right people before implementing the change.”
Jeffrey Shank

“Plan for change management processes for your designers and writers. Much as programmers had to go from top down structure programming to object oriented languages, this is a paradigm shift. So think about them and plan for change management.”
Mary Miller

Start slowly with a high impact project

The advice here is not to start with a pilot exercise for content reuse, but to actually consider going ahead with a high-impact project. That being said, you should make sure that this project would provide many opportunities for reuse and would touch on many people in the production process so everyone can see the big benefits.

“Start with a high impact project so that everyone can see the successes and then market them appropriately. The fact that when changing something in one place impacts all deliverables is the biggest benefit of all. The more deliverables, the higher the impact of the project, the more business needs will be addressed. What is more, think for how much longer your content can be alive and stay valid by assembling it differently – for reuse. Therefore, make the above benefits as clear as possible so that everyone can see their value.”
Mary Miller

“Start slowly with a high impact project for optimum results. For example, with one of our customers, we started the project with small steps, but it was of high impact because their existing courseware was migrated to the XML based LCMS. There was a big number of modules to be converted, but the first ones where small bits of the larger project. Small, but high impact.”
Skip Marshall

Market the advantages

Finally, for the people that will not experience the changes directly, make sure you market the benefits gained to them.

“Market the advantages to all the stakeholders and the business partners. This gives your designers and writers a win.”
Mary Miller

Read more on Reusability 2.0 implementations …

Designing Learning Content for Reusability 2.0 – webinar
Plugging Learning into Enterprise Content Management – whitepaper
Reusability 2.0: Simplifying Training Development and Delivery - analyst report
Designing Today’s e-Learning Content for Tomorrow’s Training Tools – video

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