L&D Project Management Guide For Aspiring Professionals
Would you like to learn more about project management and develop these skills? Are you planning to take the next step in your career? If you are ready to take this step in L&D project management, some roles, along with L&D Project Manager, include:
- Learning Consultant
- Senior Learning Developer
- Senior Instructional Designer
- Senior Learning Technologist
- Senior Learning Content Developer
- Senior Trainer/Facilitator
- Learning Business Partner
- Learning Project Manager
- Multimedia Designer, etc.
How Can You Start?
Always read Learning and Development project management articles or dedicated PM books, keep up with the learning trends, and become visible on social media by sharing or writing L&D articles. Start looking for Learning Project Manager job descriptions to identify the main roles and responsibilities of your future and desired job. This will help you have an idea of what the companies are looking for, what the required tools are, the certifications needed, and much more.
If you still haven’t done so, start looking for a certification in the PM field (ideal if you can find something related to L&D project management—that would be great), and learn from other L&D professionals/PMs by shadowing, networking, and participating in events and specific groups. Update your resume, improve your portfolio, and check for internal roles in the company you are currently working for. Also, apply for external roles outside the company to get hired.
Let’s dive deeper into the L&D project management aspect.
An Overview Of The L&D Project Management Lifecycle
1. Project Needs Analysis
Engage stakeholders with critical questions to identify project requirements and goals.
2. Kickoff Meeting
Conduct an initial meeting to align objectives, clarify roles, and establish a shared understanding of the project.
3. Project Timeline Development
Outline the project phases—Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate—detailing tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines.
4. Task Planning
Define specific tasks, assign ownership, and establish clear priorities.
5. Monitoring And Updates
Regularly review progress, provide updates, and hold project meetings to ensure alignment and address issues promptly.
6. Project Closure Report
A document of the entire project lifecycle, including:
- Initial project needs.
- Meeting minutes of what has been discussed during the meetings/calls.
- Completed tasks and checklists based on the requested activities.
- Deliverables (the final developed documentation, materials, course links, etc.).
- Lessons learned (including what was okay during the project, including people, tasks, organization, monitoring, challenges, aspects that didn’t go well, and aspects and opportunities for improvement during the upcoming learning projects).
- Recognition of team efforts and project celebration!
Key Methodologies
Instructional Design methodologies are frameworks or approaches used to systematically create effective, engaging, and learner-centered instructional experiences. Employing structured frameworks, such as ADDIE, SAM, or Bloom’s Taxonomy, will guide the project process effectively.
L&D Project Management Tools
Now, it’s time to identify the tools a Learning Project Manager can use. For the project needs analysis (key questions for your stakeholders) there are some preliminary questions that can be used to identify the project needs, and I will provide a few examples below:
- Purpose and objectives
What do we want to achieve through this project? Are there clear and measurable goals? What is the desired result? - Time and deadline
What is the deadline for completing the project? Are there milestones or deliverables along the way? How often should we report progress? - Allocation of resources and responsibilities
Who are the key people involved and what roles do they each have? What resources do we have at our disposal (time, budget, equipment)? Who makes the final decisions, and who is the main point of contact? - Risks and challenges
What anticipated risks are there for this project? What preventative measures can we take to manage potential obstacles? How do we handle delays or last-minute changes? - Tools
What communication channels will we use for updates and questions? Are there dedicated platforms where we can monitor progress? How often will we hold review meetings?
As every project should start with a kickoff meeting, you can use various communication tools. A Learning Project Manager should also develop a project timeline and keep track of all project activities. The following step would be to plan all the tasks, using project management planning tools with nice design and a lot of functionalities.
The monitoring part includes checking, providing project updates, and project meetings when needed or with regularity, and communication tools or email can easily help with that. That can also depend on the type of project. The project closure report can be created in any note-taking app, shared via email, or presented as a PDF document with a well-organized structure, clear visualization, and professional formatting.
Conclusion
We all have different types of working, planning, and organizing but this overview serves as a starting point when planning to start a new L&D project management career. It’s also useful when you’re starting a new project and feel uncertain about how to begin, organize, and manage your projects, or if you are looking for fresh inspiration by exploring other project structures.
Originally published on January 11, 2025
