ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.

com Staff
Training Plan - High Level Requirements www.projectconnections.com
and Work Breakdown guidelines

Training Plan Template:

High Level Requirements and Work Breakdown

What: Template for creating a plan for developing a training course, focusing on how to define
customer-focused high-level requirements for the course and how to define a thorough work
breakdown for developing it.
Can be used for a course that must be developed as part of creating any kind of new product or
service. Or it can be used for a course that is being developed as a money-raising educational
offering on its own.
Why: Creating training is a project. The training course must meet certain goals
(requirements) for the customer; it must be designed well; it must be completed on time and
within budget. If the course is part of launching a new product or service, the training course will
be a critical part of whether the entire launch is successful. (If the product is launched but the
sales people don't understand how to sell it, or customer support doesn't know how to service it,
it won't mean much that the product or service got "out the door"!)
How: Use this template and the included work breakdown guidelines during the investigation
and planning stage of your project.

Section 1: Training Project Vision on the next page provides an example of defining
customer-focused requirements. (This is based on our ProjectConnections Project Vision
template).
The example Vision is for a project management software company designing a training course
to help people understand the concepts of project planning, and how to use their tool to do
effective project planning.

Section 2: Development Timeline and Estimates, Training Course Development

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Permission for Members to use personally as long as ProjectConnections.com attribution is maintained
ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.com Staff
Training Plan - High Level Requirements www.projectconnections.com
and Work Breakdown guidelines

Section 1: Training Course Project Vision

Project Definition: Create training offerings that will complement the sale of our tools and
services. These training offerings will ensure clients get up to speed quickly with our project
management tool, that clients and potential clients understand the concepts of effective project
planning, and that clients understand how to use our tool for planning their projects.
1. Stated goal:
Create a course that explains the concept of project planning, its importance to project
success, its main tenets and techniques, and how it fits with the normal stages of a project.
Relate these concepts to how our software is used to enhance planning of projects.
NOTE: we will fill in more detail in this charter in the Requirements Meeting: it is very
important to identify the different segments of the audience and what the training needs to
provide them.
2. Customers for this training, benefits they need, key “features” to deliver the benefit.

Customer Benefits to that Customer Key features of the training

Individual Most important benefit for  Training should cover use cases for these
project them is knowing how best to PMs making typical project and portfolio
managers use the tool in their daily tradeoffs
using the tool situation to get valuable
for project project insights as fast as  Course should involve hands on use of
planning and possible. (The tool is complex, the tool in at least 2 tradeoff scenarios.
risk can be used very creatively,  Requires creation of canned project plan
assessment. which can overwhelm the for them to manipulate.
users)
 NOTE: This case could be also be included
as online tutorial bundled with the software.
Their These users have less hands-  Section of training that covers report
managers who on with the user interface; they output and analysis approaches from
see copies of care more about knowing how their perspective and the project managers'
the output to to use the report output and perspective.
understand use it to help the PMs make
where project the appropriate tradeoff  NOTE: make this section modular so it can
issues lie decisions for their projects. be offered fairly standalone to Exec level

Consulting Develop fast confidence in and  They will need both sections above;
partners capability for how to apply our
tool to their particular customer  Also a section showing cases of how it's
situations. applied in different industries and how to
customize for those environments.
Internal Prepare our customer support  They need to receive the user training
support people to be able to help users
personnel over the phone or web  Plus they need a special module on
conference supporting customers: typical roadblocks
customers will hit, how to address, how to
deal with difficult customers.
Continued next page

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Permission for Members to use personally as long as ProjectConnections.com attribution is maintained
ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.com Staff
Training Plan - High Level Requirements www.projectconnections.com
and Work Breakdown guidelines

3. Other key factors for the training course design:

 Use of user manual: Make the user manual one item they need to use during the
courses, so that they get familiar with finding answers in the manual
 Use of online help: Build in exercise where they have to access online help to
determine how to do a certain operation or interpret a certain report.
 Tools: Course slides will be created in MS PowerPoint. Any handouts will be created
in MS Word.
 Configuration control and dissemination: Training course modules will be stored in a
designated "master" directory and owned by ______________.
Instructors/partners/consultants needing to access the materials will do so from a
"distribution" directory that contains the latest released version of the training materials.
 Feedback system: We should put in place a feedback mechanism that gives
instructors an easy way to make comments on the material and suggestions for
improvement. For instance, we know from past more ad hoc training delivery on the
software, we've had to adjust the exercises to fit the industry and corporate environment.
We want instructors to have a way to give such feedback.

4. Project Time and $$ Parameters:

 Deadline: Courses must be ready for delivery to a paying customer by _____________.
 Tradeoffs: If time issue arises, the management-oriented course should be completed
first, since those people are our buyers, we are planning to provide consulting support
for early tools use by the individuals, and want main goal of the early use to get the
execs hooked on the insights they get from the tools output.
 Pilot: We recommend running pilot courses with friendly users and potential partners.
 Resource assumptions: Course details will be developed (in house, out of house).
Same for artwork, slides templates, etc.
 Budget for design of materials (including art, slide template design, handout masters
layout, etc.)
 Target cost for course materials duplication: Not to exceed $____ per student

Summary Table: Training Components from Above Analysis

 Project planning introduction: philosophy, benefits, etc.
 Use case modules: project and portfolio tradeoff analysis
 Use case modules: report interpretation and analysis
 Canned project models for analysis in class exercises
 Industry specific applications/ customization
 Customer support module

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Permission for Members to use personally as long as ProjectConnections.com attribution is maintained
ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.com Staff
Training Plan - High Level Requirements www.projectconnections.com
and Work Breakdown guidelines

Section 2: Development Timeline and Estimates: Training Course Development

Work Breakdown:
Phase 1: Requirements Definition and High level design:
1. Hold requirements meeting to define the Project Vision and detailed requirements
 What are the segments of users (e.g. executive/management vs. technical personnel).
How are they instructed to use it? What is the sequence of things they do -- how they
begin using it on their projects?
 Define course audiences and learning objectives for each
 Need for different course formats? e.g. 4 hour course; 1 day or 2 day; 1-2 hour
presentation session on Project Planning.
 Define need for different course purposes: e.g. training of users vs. use in hotel
seminars to expose prospective clients to the tool in more of a marketing fashion--
don't teach all the detail, concentrate on answers generated - very akin to the level
you'd teach executives who are just going to use and interpret results.
 These formats might correlate to different levels of training material, different training
focus (e.g. using the tool vs. interpreting results at a management level) and different
lengths for different segments of your audience.
 Need for online version of the courses - who would use an online version of the
course? Would it also be valuable as follow-up reference after a classroom course?
 Discuss how the training content overlaps with other user support materials being
created.
 Discuss deployment method so we can plan ahead for those activities. E.g., are we
going to ask some early customers to participate in a pilot?
Phase 2: Development:
2. Create course outlines, with draft exercise ideas and handout ideas (for each desired
course format/length and audience deemed needed from conversation above)
3. Review, make updates
4. Create full draft of course material matching agreed-upon outlines. Including exercise and
handout detail and outlines for train the trainer materials.
5. Review, identify necessary changes.
Phase 3: Final production and deployment:
6. Complete/ polish course material (slides) and create speaker notes and handouts
7. Pilot: Deliver course to friendly customers, customer support personnel, etc to test it
8. Review results and update course from issues discovered in this course
9. Create train-the-trainer materials if needed
10. Any final tweaks before production of larger course handout materials and scheduling of
courses for paying customers.

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Permission for Members to use personally as long as ProjectConnections.com attribution is maintained
ProjectConnections.com Template Contributed by ProjectConnections.com Staff
Training Plan - High Level Requirements www.projectconnections.com
and Work Breakdown guidelines

Estimating the timeline to execute the above:

Base course materials: One common rule-of-thumb estimate for work hours required for
course creation
Instructor-led training: Anywhere from 15-40 hours of development work per 1 hour of
course time. Depends upon amount of original exercise creation, course development
experience of the creator; subject matter/tool expertise of the creator.
Example: For the project that formed the basis of the example in this template, the contributor
had estimated 132 hours of course creation work for a one-day (8 hour) course with one long
case study exercise.

Train-the-trainer materials: This is for courses that need to be deliverable by multiple people
(like regional training centers for clients) and all need to get up to speed fast.
Calls for creation of instructional materials that lead the new trainer through the course material.
Explains the objectives of each section; tells them what kinds of questions to ask to stimulate
discussion; provides lists of typical questions or issues students might bring up and how to
answer them.
Typical estimates: 1-2 days of train the trainer material creation per 1 hour of course material
(includes initial writing, review, updates).

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Permission for Members to use personally as long as ProjectConnections.com attribution is maintained