How to Create, Launch, and Deliver a Course on Time
Never miss a deadline again - Includes checklist and timeline template
If you do it right, training looks easy. If it’s in person, the trainer seamlessly pulls up slides, distributes handouts, gets everyone to chat and write on the whiteboard, and everyone leaves happy.
In an online course, the trainer manages all the tech, monitors the chat, and answers everyone’s questions.
Your trainees don’t see the thought that went into creating, launching, and delivering the course. They don’t know you started planning the course months ago.
As a Learning and Development Manager, I’ve implemented large-scale training programs for hundreds of employees. What I’ve learned is that you need to be realistic about how long things take.
“Oh, so your job is quite easy, and stress free then?” - a man on a date, after I’d explained how I ran the training function for a company of 600.
You’ve got your course idea all laid out and ready to go. You know the content, the audience, and the structure. The CEO has signed off the content, the budget and the resources.
Now you have to plan how to deliver it.
Luckily, planning is one of my superpowers. Unfortunately, being subtle isn’t. In my corporate role, I had to learn not to blurt out, “That won’t work,” when someone suggested an unworkable project timeline.
Planning is all about ensuring that all the logistics work and that you have time to create, launch, and deliver your course at the optimum time.
It doesn’t matter what your topic is, how many sessions there are, or whether you deliver it face-to-face, online, or hybrid. You still need to plan.
To show you what I mean, let’s have a look at an example:
Example - Customer Service Course for 200 employees
Let’s imagine you are managing the creation and delivery of a customer service course to 200 front-line employees. The latest secret shopper/customer service surveys gave your organization a grade of 2/5, and the board wants the rating to improve by the following survey: June 25th, 2025.
The course is eight hours long, and you will deliver it face-to-face as a full-day course. Remember, this has all been discussed and agreed upon with the stakeholders, and we are only looking at timeframes here.
Let’s look at some dates to get an idea of the timeframe.
Key dates:
Today’s date: September 16th 2024
Deadline: 25th June 2025
Number of weeks to deadline: 39
Wow!
Thirty-nine weeks, we’ve got all the time in the world. Let’s leave it all until after Christmas and worry about it in the New Year!
But before we forget all about the course, let’s look closer.
Are all of our thirty-nine weeks available to us in reality?
A quick look at the calendar shows that we have:
Ten days of annual leave booked over Christmas and New Year, plus the stat days
A five-day training course in April
Five days annual leave to attend a cousin’s wedding in May
We’ve just lost five weeks, taking us down to thirty-four weeks.
Solopreneurs:
You might not be rolling out full-day courses three times a week, but you may have workshops, Q&As, and course modules to drip-feed. You still need to plan.
Also, consider childcare, your cash flow, and any expenses you incur. Revenue expectations may well set your deadlines, so you need to get it right.
On her podcast, Chill and Prosper, Denise Duffield-Thomas talks about inadvertently planning a launch during school holidays when she had no childcare.
Denise also recommends checking all your medical, beauty, and house maintenance appointments. You don't want the water-blasting guy banging around outside your window while delivering a live session. It will destroy your concentration.
Check the dates of family events, and anything else that will interfere with your course delivery.
Action points:
Make a project plan so you can see all your deadlines
Include all holidays or other days you won't be available to work on this project
Include personal appointments, school holidays, and anything else that will interfere with your project, and make a plan to work around them
Now, we'll work backward from delivery, as this is the best way to ensure you've considered all the moving parts in time.
Course Delivery
The next job is to block out some time for the course delivery.
We know we have 200 Customer Services employees to train. In addition, 15 supervisors and 2 Managers need a briefing before the course rollout.
Why? It's always a good idea to get the supervisors onside, and one thing that will rile a supervisor up good and proper is sending their team on a course without a) telling them and b) training them, too.
We're using the board room, which can hold up to 12 trainees. We could complete the course much quicker if we had the budget to hire a conference room, but we don't, so the boardroom is.
To allow for student and course cancellations, we'll invite 12 but plan for 8 attendees for each course. Also, some employees will leave after we've trained them (because of staff turnover, not the training!), and we'll end up training more than 200 people.
We therefore have 200/8 sessions = 25 sessions
The training days are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, so we need 25/3 weeks of training, which is eight weeks.
As the training days aren't Monday or Friday and we've already accounted for Christmas, we don't need to worry about public holidays.
We discover the board room is unavailable for one week, which takes our available weeks down to 33, but we book out the rest of the dates.
To give us some extra wiggle room, we'll allow an extra two weeks for delivery, which means a course start date of March 17th.
We'll book another two weeks to accommodate the Supervisors' and Managers' briefings.
Isn't this overdoing it with all the planning, wiggle room, and expecting cancellations?
No. Supervisors and managers are notorious for canceling training, and you might get the flu and need time off.
Solopreneurs:
Your delivery will look different, but you still have to plan it in.
You may have large groups in your webinars or small groups in workshop sessions.
Either way, ensure you have the bandwidth (literally), the technical equipment, and the capacity to lead the sessions.
If you are relying on guest speakers, book them in. The same goes for any make-up, hair, and lighting professionals you use before a live broadcast.
Action points:
Put your course dates on your project plan
Allow for holidays, national holidays, and anything else that will prevent you from delivering the course
Book in all venues and other resources as soon as you can
Launch
Our course is delivered the first week in March, which means we have to work backwards from there. If we estimate that the launch will take place over four weeks, and that it will take two weeks to prepare, we need to start on January 20th.
In NZ, people take their annual summer holiday over the Christmas holiday, which means many people are away from mid-December to late January.
According to the plan, we've got three weeks off over Christmas, and I've allowed a week to settle back in. Then, we are straight into the launch phase.
The duration and content of your launch plan depends on the size, type, and duration of the course you are launching.
In our customer service example, you'd need to plan in:
Emails, texts, slack alerts going out a month before the course
An article in the employee newsletter
A video of the CEO or course sponsor endorsing the course
Anything else you can think of that will help your course succeed
If you have a Marketing team, they’ll help you, if not, consider every mode of communication and which ones will suit your organizational culture.
Solopreneurs:
Your launch is quite different as it's all about getting customers to pay to enroll in your course. Depending on where you are as a creator you might send out a few emails the week before or start six weeks before the start date.
Your launch can include:
Emails, social posts, and newsletters talking about building your product
Emails or social media posts asking your audience to help choose a book cover or title for the course
A series of value-based emails about the course topic
A cart open email plus a further set of value-based emails
Posts and advertisements on social
Webinars
DMs to check if people are interested
Sales calls
Cart closing emails with countdown tracker
Then
Emails or calls to ask why people did not enroll
Onboarding your new customers
Check out holiday dates, hospital appointments, national holidays, and any significant event (such as the US election) that may interfere with your launch plans.
Action points:
Design a realistic launch plan for your course and add it to your project plan
Check that any resources or people you'll need to work with on the launch are available when you need them
Take into account all holidays, national holidays, and anything else that will interfere with your ability to work on the launch
Course Design
Next, put in the time slots for the course design. This is where we cross our fingers and hope there is enough time. I've attended many ‘first project meetings’ where it turns out we should have started a project six weeks ago, much to the dismay of my less planning aware colleagues.
From our project timeline, we can see that the course design will need to take place before the Christmas break. But how long will the course design take?
We are going to split the course design process up like this:
Course design - five weeks
Stakeholder feedback - one week
Revisions from feedback - one week
Stakeholder sign-off - one week
Beta testing - two weeks
Beta testing revisions - one week
Final sign-off - two weeks
That’s thirteen weeks and means we have to start next week!
Crikey!
Good job we made a plan and didn't wait until after the holidays!
Again, is all this planning over the top?
It depends. If you're a one-woman/man band, you might be able to whip up the course, send out a few emails, and deliver it. But only if you are starting. The prominent online course creators will be planning 12-18 months (well, they are according to what they say on their podcasts).
“How can training people be hard? You just tell people how to work the till.”—my mum, after I told her I was training the staff of 16 large stores to use the new computerized tills in 1984
And if you are in corporate, a big investment like this will likely be monitored closely. You may be doing all the design and delivery, and the venue is free, but 200 days multiplied by a day's pay for all the attendees is a large amount of money.
Not counting your time, the supervisors and manager’s time and the marketing team’s time.
Let's jump in and see what we do in each part of the course design.
Course design - 5 weeks
During these five weeks, you'll create all the course materials based on the content, mode of training, and duration that you have already agreed with the stakeholders, such as:
Slides
Handouts
Lesson plans
Workbooks
Trainers Workbook
Assessments
Assessment Answers
Online modules
Pre-course work
Activities
If you have any questions as you go, discuss them ad hoc with the stakeholders.
Feedback Session - 1 week
This week, you'll deliver the course to the stakeholders in a shortened form. You'll go over the slides, describe the activities, and provide copies of the course materials.
It's best to:
Book this as far in advance as possible otherwise, you won't be able to get the attendees (or the meeting room) you want
Ask the stakeholders to give feedback on each course module as you go rather than ad hoc
Provide the course material beforehand so the stakeholders can review it beforehand
This is where you find out that what the stakeholders said they wanted, even though you triple-checked, isn't quite what they wanted after all.
Take notes of all the required changes and send them out to the stakeholders.
Stakeholder meeting revisions & Sign-off - 2 weeks
During these two weeks, you make all the revisions the stakeholders asked for and confirm it's what they wanted.
Beta testing - 2 weeks
Now, it's time to deliver the course to some sample attendees. Include a few supervisors, union reps if you have a union, and five or six employees who can give constructive feedback.
Run 2-3 full sessions, improve as you go, and note anything that needs changing.
Book the venue and the attendees for these sessions as early as possible.
Beta feedback revisions
These revisions will include minor changes such as clarifying the meaning of slides, fixing activities that didn't work, and changing assessment questions that no one understood.
Final Sign off
This is where the stakeholders sign off on the content, and you can celebrate phase one's completion. Book a meeting with the stakeholders as early as possible so you have time for the meeting and some back-and-forth.
Solopreneurs:
Your timeline may differ, but you'll still need to design your course, run it past any stakeholders, and beta-test it. If you only have one business partner or your main stakeholder is your mum, it will likely be quicker than a corporate process.
Your beta testers might be previous subscribers to your email list or people who have expressed interest in your course on LinkedIn or other social media.
Action points:
Design a realistic timeline to create your course
Include time for revisions, beta testing, stakeholder meetings, and sign-off
Book all meetings and beta testing dates early
Ensure your stakeholders and beta testing attendees are available to attend
Takeaways
If you want your course to succeed, your launch and delivery schedule must also work well. No one wants to create a fantastic course to have it fail because of a lack of marketing and planning.
I've rolled out many large-scale courses, which always take far longer than you think. However, if you plan correctly and allow a lot of wiggle room, you'll be OK.
You must also plan your own time. If you set aside five weeks to design a course but you are working on other projects, how will you do it? The same goes for all stages of design, launch, and delivery. There are only so many hours in the day, so you must be realistic.
Thanks for reading, I hope this was useful.
Here is a checklist to help you plan your next course roll out:
Here is timeline spreadsheet template:
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