Managing Content Development

To learn about what to consider when starting content development, play the video.

People rely on a combination of knowledge retention and learning in the flow of work. Enablement content has the following characteristics:

• It's accessible​.
• It's digestible​.
• It's dynamic​.
• It meets different needs​.
• It's available when needed.
• It's business relevant​.
• It's consistent.

Usually, as a content developer, you develop various content types. Furthermore, you can use various content development tools. To learn more, play the video.

To summarize, as a content developer, consider the following types of enablement content:

• Simulation recordings
• E-learning
• Quizzes
• Exercises
• User guides
• In-application help
• Video tutorials

Furthermore, consider enablement content-development dependencies. Choose the right content-development tools that fulfill your content requirements and that fit your development conditions.

It's important that you carry out enablement content design and development in a clearly defined project plan and with a documented quality assurance process. 

In the next video, learn what to do for content quality assurance.

The following figure recaps the steps in the quality assurance process.

1. Mobilize development team:

   Ensure all resources involved are familiar with the tools, templates, and standards they must follow. Give a short, focused mobilization phase for the content development team.

2. Create development standards:

   A coherent look and feel to enablement content is important. Adhere to your organization’s branding standards and tone of voice. Give authoring tools, templates, and style guides to the development team so that everyone aligns their content to this look and feel.

   At the start of the content development work, SAP Learning recommends that you create a prototype of each type of enablement content. You can also use the prototype as a demonstration to the stakeholder community on how users can access and use this content. 

3. Review and sign off:

   It's important to have a clearly documented review and sign off process where subject matter experts check the accuracy of the content. For translated content, use a local language speaker in the review process. Implement a plan for regular knowledge transfer sessions from subject matter experts to content developers.

   To support the sign-off process, create a review or validation checklist for subject matter experts.

4. Track development:

   Measure content development progress against clear timelines. Tracking development to plan is important for meeting deadlines. To ensure milestones and deadlines aren't missed, create a detailed development tracker aligned to the wider project plan.

   This development tracker has a level of granularity that gives a milestone plan across the full scope of enablement content. It helps each content developer manage their workload and know the timelines to work to.

5. Update content:

   Enablement content is only effective if it's kept live and updated. To truly have a sustainable learning solution, you must factor in ongoing updates to enablement content.

   An agile approach to content development lends itself to our cloud culture of moving fast and quickly adapting to changes.

Cloud solutions constantly change. When you implement a cloud solution, you automatically receive updates on an ongoing basis. The latest features and functions are always available. Enablement content must be continuously aligned to these updates.

When designing enablement content, also consider how it will be deployed or published later in the enablement delivery phase.

When designing content, the same content can appear in different modes, which is called multimodality. For example, you create a content block that can be used in the classroom, integrated into eLearning and in application help.

To learn more, play the video.

The following figure recaps the content modality options.

Consider the re-usability of your content.

Some organizations must develop content in other languages. Play the next video to learn what to consider for content translation.

In this lesson, you learned a lot about various content requirements, development tools, and target group specifics you must consider when developing enablement content. Take a few minutes to think about:

• What aspects are relevant in your specific project context? What do you already consider, what do you want to consider more?
• What do you want to clarify before starting with content development?