ADDIE Implementation in the Workplace

Implementation Makes the Difference

When companies launch a course, they enter the ADDIE implementation phase. During this phase, the companies must successfully deliver their courses to their learners. Each course represents a significant investment of corporate resources and time. It’s very important for the course to make a significant and meaningful impact on the learners.

On the strategic level, companies rely on training programs to reduce costs and improve profitability by improving people’s performance in many different ways:

• Increase sales and customer satisfaction
• Improve efficiency and productivity
• Ensure legal compliance and reduce liability
• Guide people through new and changed processes
• Introduce new people to the company’s methods and culture

Companies that want to achieve these goals need well-written training programs that are launched successfully. However, it’s important to remember that great course content doesn’t guarantee a successful launch. In this section, we’ll assume that the company has done its homework and created an excellent training course. Instead, we’ll focus on the challenges that companies face during the ADDIE implementation phase.

How Scope Impacts Training Delivery

When companies deliver training programs, they often involve hundreds and perhaps even thousands of learners. Even a small course can involve dozens of people. Some of the biggest challenges during the ADDIE implementation phase fall into the categories of training administration and logistics.

Some companies have very skilled in-house training departments. These people know how to coordinate and deliver training programs to thousands of people across the world within a short time frame. However, other companies don’t have this depth of training delivery experience and a nationwide course rollout can become quite a challenge.

If you’ve followed the ADDIE model, you’ve conducted a course pilot session. Perhaps some learners gathered together in a classroom or tested out the online learning course. You’ve asked a sample group of learners to help you review the course. However, there’s a lot of work to ramp up from this single session to a full nationwide or global course delivery.

In many ways, the training delivery phase must recognize the powerful impact of Murphy’s Law—if anything can go wrong, it will. It’s extremely important to carefully plan the training delivery process. Let’s look at some of the factors that companies must consider when preparing to launch classroom and e-learning courses.

Launching a Classroom Course

Here’s a list of some of the questions that people have to answer when they start a large-scale training delivery project. This list is not comprehensive, but it gives a good overview highlighting why training delivery often requires active project management.

Many of these questions have to be answered well before the implementation phase begins. If a company starts a large scale delivery project without answering these questions, the project can quickly turn into disorganized chaos.

Launching an Online Course

An online course often requires significant systems integration tasks. Here are some sample issues for an e-learning course that will be delivered online to learners.

There are many ways that an online course can implode during the delivery process. An online course can be so popular that the hosting site crashes when everyone tries to access it at the same time. The course might not integrate properly with the company’s learning management system. The file might have a broken link so learners receive the dreaded “file not found” error.

These technical issues often require the training project’s team to coordinate with the company’s IT department, but the collaboration can mean the difference between a rough and a smooth launch.