Although e-learning projects can vary greatly in scope, content and audience, any serious development (or prototyping) team will usually require expertise in:

* Subject matter

* Instructional design

* Interface/visual/media design

* Interface (or ‘front end’) construction

* Database (or ‘back end’) development

So why define roles at all? If your project is very small, or if you already have all the skills required, then perhaps a formal team structure may not benefit you as much as some larger teams. But for development teams of about three or more staff, defining roles and responsibilities can help in key areas, such as:

* Reducing re-work and idle time

* Identifying ‘role conflict’

* Getting day-to-day production problems solved more quickly

Junior vs Senior Roles: Experience Counts!
At production time it’s easy to see the difference and impact a senior team members makes. They’re the ones who can do it faster, or have more control over their production tools, or show some other visibly ‘senior’ qualities. But by this time you should also have experienced some of the invisible (but critical) benefits of senior team members.

In particular, senior staff (instructional designer, visual/interface designer, technical lead) should already have helped shape and define your product before ‘any’ development commences. In an ideal world this would happen at the prototype or ‘proof-of-concept’ stage, but even if that hasn’t happened their input is still vital in establishing the real-world operating parameters, and delivering the users’ experience of your project.

It’s realistic to expect that your senior team members would also have ‘junior’ level skills in most (or all, if you’re lucky!) of the other disciplines required for your project. This can be helpful when team members are absent and work needs to continue, but the real value of such a multi-skilled team leader is in identifying likely trouble spots and resolving the issues before they delay production or cause rework. While it’s reasonable to expect junior and intermediate team members to resolve issues within their expertise, there are usually implications for other production areas that can’t be ignored, and a senior member who can provide an accurate and informed on-the-spot decision will save countless hours of meetings, rework and bug fixing.

Conflict of Interest: What Happens When One Person Fills More Than One Role?
Although every e-learning project has its ups and downs, some of the worst development issues can arise when just one person performs particular roles. In my experience, combining roles that advocate the goals and needs of the client, with roles that advocate and manage the development team, is a recipe for tension, discord and conflict!

For example, consider that the client’s goals will usually be focused on higher ‘production values’ (that is, more features, better results and so forth), while the development team goals will be directed towards meeting technical specifications, deadlines and budgets, developing new functionality and ensuring a stable and technically successful product. At their heart, these are conflicting objectives. The client, naturally, wants as much value as possible for their dollar, while the developers strive to reduce production time (either to meet deadlines and budgets, or to allow more time for new, or unresolved features).

If your development team leader is also acting in a client advocacy role (like a project manager that liaises directly with the client) the results of the internal ‘conflict of interest’ become apparent: the development team might experience ‘feature creep’ and other scope-related issues; the client may feel that their needs are subservient to the development team.

Additionally, even if you aren’t experiencing these symptoms, senior production team members (and experienced clients) will usually recognise the opportunities that this ‘role conflict’ presents and act according to their own needs. As long as everyone can rely totally on the integrity of all parties at all times this should present no problem, but as a developer that’s just another ‘loose end’ to deal with at production time, and as a client it raises doubts that are awkward to express, especially if your project manager is also a lead development team member. How many clients would confidently raise the subject of ‘doubts about the roles’ at the start of a project? Would you?

Conclusion and URLs for Further Investigation
From a developer’s perspective it’s critical for me to understand who does what on my team. It’s common to see a ‘Roles and Responsibilities’ document (with some description of each member’s key responsibilities) as part of any detailed plan, and like any process-related documents it’s important to keep this information current (especially if the project is a large one, or requires many team members). Like n-tier application development, e-learning teams often comprise overlapping areas of expertise, with widely differing qualifications and skill levels. It’s up to you to decide whether an individual’s ‘secondary skills’ are going to be enough for the project you envisage, and if you don’t feel up to making the judgement on your own, then the advice of a senior team member can be critical to the eventual success of your project. The diagram in Figure 1 below gives a guide to the skills you might expect from your development team members (NB Senior roles/skills are shown as solid colours, while junior skills are shown as lighter shades). In larger projects each box may represent one person, in a small (or prototype) development there may be only one person for many boxes/skills/roles.

Click here to view Figure 1

It would be easy to assume that a successful Web application (or multimedia) development team could produce high calibre e-learning, but without the right division of responsibility and direction from experienced e-learning team members, it’s easy to watch a compelling concept descend into low-value ‘page turning’ mediocrity (which you probably didn’t include in your presentation to the board, right?).

There are different (and appropriate) team structures for all kinds of software development. The roles discussed here may not be an exact fit for your project, but selecting developers with the right skills, and avoiding ‘conflict of interest’ within the development team remain critical factors in any successful e-learning project. The URLs that follow provide some alternative views, background information, and more ‘process-related’ detail:

The Nine Pillars of Successful Web Development Teams
www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000242.php

Business Processes
www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/Business_Processes_i1.htm

E-Learning Project Team: Roles and Responsibilities
www.e-learningguru.com/articles/art1_4.htm