What role does project management play in the success of e-learning development?
Ivana Palaić is the project manager at Ewyse, an all-in-one e-learning agency that builds tailored courses that attract, entertain, educate and design customized solutions for clients around the world. Today, she talks with us how project management allows for smooth collaboration between effective production teams, clients, stakeholders and third-party providers, and why e-learning localization should never be an afterthought.
Why is effective project management so important in the e-learning course development process?
As a project manager at an eLearning Agency, I believe effective project management is absolutely essential in course development, as it ensures complex projects are delivered on time, on budget and in the highest quality. Keeping learner needs and client strategic goals at the forefront.
What I found was juggling multiple interconnected phases, from needs analysis, storyboard preparation, education design to quality assurance, client reviews and localization.
Coordinating this many components of e-learning development requires a high level of structure and accuracy, especially when working with global teams, multiple stakeholders, and subject matter experts (SMEs) in different time zones. Without strong project management, delays, misunderstandings and scopes can easily creep and derail the process.
I think strong project management is needed:
Maintain clear communication between clients, small businesses and development teams. Prioritize tasks and manage resources efficiently. Mitigate risk by predicting challenges and implementing timely solutions. Ensure quality through structured reviews and feedback cycles. We are flexible in meeting client needs within agreed terms without compromising deadlines.
In my experience, managing e-learning projects, combining agile and waterfall methodology with a clear, repetitive feedback loop, is key to keeping complex, large projects on track, while still maintaining flexibility. This approach helped me build trust and encourage strong collaboration with my clients. And that makes your workflow much smoother and more efficient.
How can the implemented projects enable companies to expand their L&D initiatives and increase learner satisfaction?
Let me answer with an example. One of the clients, the global company has embarked on a large project that includes 54 courses offered in six languages. It is normal that they have brought their own expectations and vision for the project. However, after seeing the final product, they were delighted to be surprised by the true potential of e-learning. This project showed them how scalable and flexible e-learning is. Now they already plan to update and expand their courses and are confident in their ability to evolve with the e-learning business.
This example highlights that project execution not only provides initial goals, but also allows companies to scale their learning and development initiatives. If the project is completed on time, on budget and fits with learners’ needs and business goals, they will build trust and encourage further investment in training.
Additionally, a well-managed project will learn engaging and relevant content tailored to the needs of the learners. This increases learner satisfaction and motivation, leading to course completion rates, knowledge retention, and more effective real-world applications. The final result? Stronger performance and better business outcomes.
In short, well-run projects create a strong foundation for the continued growth of L&D, providing meaningful learning experiences, and fostering a cycle in which success further encourages innovation and investment.
What are the key factors involved in eLearning Project Management? Also, why is it so important to build your first timeline?
Managing an e-learning project requires more than just crafting tasks. It involves adjusting several core elements, including comprehensive planning, clear and continuous stakeholder communication, thoughtful resource allocation, aggressive risk management, and structured quality assurance through repeated reviews.
Each project manager naturally develops the best approach for the team and business context. Over time, we identified three repetitive pressure points for clients working with external agencies. Creative alignment, process transparency, budget clarity. These became the foundation for a unique project management approach called the “3C framework” (internal naming rather than industry standard methodology).
The 3C framework brings together the key elements of e-learning project management and becomes a completely transparent structure that maintains control of the client’s hands throughout the development process.
The three CSs are as follows:
Creative control provides a structured feedback system for clients at every stage, so input forms both content and design. Process controls that ensure transparency and structure in managing projects, deliverables and communications. Financial management, which gives you full visibility into budgeting, scope, and time allocations, helps prevent surprises and maintain consistency with strategic goals.
Each of these areas clearly outlines the stages of the development process, allowing you to predict the challenges and plan ahead. Setting up a realistic timeline from the start is extremely important as it helps to establish clear expectations, prevents rushing work, and ensures ample time for meaningful feedback, revisions and quality assurance.
One example that comes to mind is a client that aims to develop nine master courses and localize them to five languages each within four months. As expected, the localization process has proven to be longer-lasting, especially since it is around the front and back of the translators and small businesses.
We quickly adjusted our new plans. This meant first prioritizing the master course and preparing for the localization phase at the same time. During the development of the master course, SME prepared a glossary of key terms, clarifying internal abbreviations, and setting narration guidelines. We also assembled dedicated small business teams for each language. This preparation meant that when it was time to translate, the process would be faster, smoother and more consistent, without sacrificing quality.
Why should organizations view e-learning localization as a highly specialized layer of project management rather than as a secondary stage?
While eLearning localization is often seen as something that happens after the main course is completed, it is actually a professional and strategic layer of project management that you need to plan from the start. This directly affects how effective, scalable and comprehensive the course will be across the region.
It’s about adapting content to not only translation, but also cultural relevance, legal compliance and platform accessibility. This includes everything from tone and visuals to local regulations and even formatting. These are complex processes that require dedicated coordination, experienced teams and a clear timeline.
If localization decisions remain to the end, they often cause delays, rework, or inconsistent learning experiences, including missing cultural references, nasty phrases, or tones that are out of sync with the original content. So it’s important to build a realistic timeline from the start, make the localization process transparent for clients and stakeholders, and to instill structures such as glossary and translation guidelines to ensure smooth collaboration when the time comes.
Of course, there are many different approaches to course development from a localization perspective. If you’re interested in which ones they are, we talked about this in the “eLearning Localization Farm” lesson.
Planning localization as a core project phase leads to smooth rollouts, better learner engagement, and more consistent training.
What is one of your outstanding project management client success stories?
I had the opportunity to manage some large and complex e-learning projects already mentioned in this article. However, what I would like to mention as a success story in terms of collaboration, adaptability and impact is my work with Global Health Advocacy Incubator (GHAI).
This project developed a total of 27 courses. Nine is in English and 18 is localized in French and Spanish. The goal was to support global health advocates across multiple countries and time zones, ensuring that the learning experience is accessible, scalable and impactful.
Maintaining the timeline, adjusting feedback, and managing range changes without losing momentum required clear structure, open communication, and a high degree of flexibility. Additionally, the course had to be optimized for mobile and low-bandwidth environments, but also provided downloadable templates and optional support materials to allow learners to adjust their experience.
That’s why the 3C framework played an important role. From a structured feedback loop to clear budget visibility, Ghai gave it full transparency and control throughout the project. We applied a hybrid project management methodology that combines waterfall structure with agile flexibility. This allowed us to continue to accommodate Ghai’s pace, consolidate feedback repeatedly, and adjust priorities without compromising quality.
This was not just about managing projects, but also about building partnerships. We worked as one team and as a result we had a robust, multilingual e-learning program that had a true global impact.
If you’d like to learn more about the course development process and collaboration with GHAI, check out our collaborative webinar that explores all of this.
I’ve heard that Ewyse is expanding to product development in addition to product distribution. Could you tell us a little more about this new strategic direction?
It sounds like the words are coming out, but I’m glad that they are!
Yes, that’s true, we are taking a bold step by expanding into product development. While project delivery remains our core strength, we are now using the same expertise to create our own solutions that support long-term learning goals.
Our first product is AI Mentor, a smart learning assistant designed to guide learners, strengthen knowledge and boost engagement. But what distinguishes AI mentors from general AI assistants is that they are dedicated to learning. It functions within eLearning courses or as a standalone app, providing personalized on-demand support tailored to your specific training goals.
What makes it unique is how flexible and secure it is. Clients can fully customize their tone, roles and behaviors to suit their training goals. Runs in a closed environment, all data is protected and under client control.
This shift points to Ewyse’s new strategic direction. By combining project expertise with in-house product development, we create tools that bring even more value to our learners and clients.
I’ll summarize
Thank you to Ivana for delving into how project management can turn complex e-learning projects into a seamless, stress-free experience. If you’d like to learn more about how Ewyse can help you create engaging, inspirational and impactful training, check out their services and real-world success stories.
