A Course Development Process for Small Training Teams: SME to Publish

A workable course development process for a small training team has six stages: brief, capture, outline, draft, build and publish. Each stage ends at a gate, where one named person checks exit criteria before work moves on. Subject matter experts (SMEs) review at set gates, for a set purpose, in a set number of rounds.

Review loops, more than building, are what usually sink deadlines on SME-led courses. Rounds run open-ended, new reviewers appear late, and feedback lands on things nobody asked about. Gates make each round small and final.

This post is for teams of two to six people. It covers the six gates, what the SME does and does not do at each, review limits, a review request you can copy, and a map to ADDIE and SAM. Every timing is a starting point to adjust, not data.

Key takeaways

• Put the number of review rounds, the named reviewers and the final decision-maker in a one-page brief before any content work starts.
• Give the SME a narrow job at each gate: accuracy, completeness and essentiality, not wording or layout.
• Treat the approved draft as the last content gate. Anything the SME adds afterward becomes a change request with a visible cost.
• Iterate inside a stage if you like, but gate between stages. That keeps the benefit of rough drafts without open-ended loops.

Why do SME review loops break the course development process?

Review loops break because nothing limits them. When reviewers are unnamed, rounds are unlimited and the scope of review is vague, every round invites new content, new reviewers and edits to work that was already approved. A gated process sets all three limits before the first draft exists.

Practitioners have described the same failure modes for years. In a 2012 Articulate community thread on too many reviewers, replies recommend four habits. Scope a fixed number of review rounds by named reviewers into the contract. Name one decision-maker. Get senior sign-off at the script stage, before graphic design begins. Ask early whether anyone will join later. That is forum advice, not research, but it matches what gates are built to do.

Who does what in a small team’s course development process?

Six roles cover the work. In a team of two to six, one person usually holds several, and that is fine. The one rule is that nobody approves the stage they authored, so each gate is a real check rather than a formality.

The roles, each with one job:

• Project owner: approves the brief, resolves conflicting feedback and signs each gate.
• Instructional designer: runs the process, writes objectives and drafts, and prepares every SME request.
• SME: owns factual accuracy and nothing else.
• Builder: turns the approved draft into a course in your authoring tool.
• QA reviewer: tests the build as a learner would, ideally someone who did not build it.
• Client or business approver (optional): signs off at the brief and at publish, not in between.

Name one decision-maker for disagreements. When two SMEs, or an SME and a client, give opposite feedback, the designer should not referee. The project owner decides and records why.

What are the six gates in a course development process?

A gate is a checkpoint at the end of a stage. The work passes only when the exit criteria are met and the named owner says so. After a gate closes, changes to that stage’s output go on a change list instead of reopening the stage.

The table below lists each stage, who leads it, and what must be true to exit. Treat the criteria as a checklist you can paste into your project tracker.

What does the SME do, and not do, at each gate?

At every gate the SME confirms that the content is accurate, complete and essential. The SME does not edit wording, layout or tone, redesign the learning approach, or add new topics after scope is confirmed. Saying this in writing, per gate, is what shortens review.

The table adds a starting-point window for each SME task. These windows are suggestions for short courses. Adjust them to your SME’s real availability, and set them in the brief.

Gate 4 is the last content gate on purpose. Changing a script is cheap, while changing a built course means rebuilding screens, audio and quizzes. Anything the SME raises after Gate 4 goes on the change list, and the project owner decides whether it is worth the date.

How many review rounds should each gate allow?

Allow one round per gate, plus a short verification pass where the designer shows the SME how each comment was handled. Write the number in the brief so it is an agreement made at the start, not a rule you invent when a project is already late.

No source gives a universal number. FEMA’s course development resources page says its SME review typically lasts 10 business days and that plans should allow for multiple technical review iterations. That is one federal organization with technical and accessibility reviews, so a small team on a short course can plan tighter windows if the SME agrees.

The wording of the request matters as much as the number. An ATD blog post by Diane Valenti, “How to Prepare Subject Matter Experts to Review Content” (February 2015), describes a pre-review email. It asks SMEs to check accuracy, completeness and whether any content is nice to know but not essential. It says grammar comes later, and it states that this is the final round, with a feedback date. The author reports that feedback became more substantive, though SMEs still sometimes missed deadlines.

Pro tip: Book The Round Before You Need It. At kickoff, put the SME’s review window and the optional review call on both calendars, with the due date in the invite title. A review that already exists on a calendar is far harder to postpone than one that arrives as an unscheduled email.

What should an SME review request say?

A good review request names the scope, the format, the deadline and the consequence of silence. It tells the SME exactly what to check and what to ignore. Use the template below for the Gate 4 email, then adapt it for the other gates.

Subject: Review needed by [date]: [Course name], draft 1 of 1

Hi [SME name],

Attached is the full draft of [course name]. This is the one review
round we agreed in the project brief.

Please check three things only:
1. Accuracy: is anything wrong or out of date?
2. Completeness: is anything missing that a learner needs
   to do the task?
3. Essentiality: is anything here nice to know but not needed
   for the objectives?

Please ignore grammar, wording and layout. We handle those in editing.

Send comments by [date] as [tracked changes / this form / a 30-minute
call on (date)]. Expected effort: about [X] minutes for [Y] screens.

If we have not heard from you by [date], we will proceed on the
current text and mark it "not SME-reviewed" in the sign-off record.

Anything new you want added after this round goes on the change list
and may move the delivery date.

Thanks,
[Name]

Base the effort estimate on your own test read of the draft. A short, specific figure makes it easier for an SME to start.

How does this course development process map to ADDIE and SAM?

The six stages follow ADDIE’s order with gates added, and borrow one idea from SAM: show rough work early. The mapping below is my own, not an official one, because neither model prescribes review rounds or SME roles.

ADDIE (analyze, design, develop, implement, evaluate) has no single authoritative specification. Michael Molenda, in “In Search of the Elusive ADDIE Model”, traces its roots to a mid-1970s U.S. armed forces model and concludes it is “an umbrella term that refers to a family of models.” SAM, the Successive Approximation Model from Michael Allen, has three phases: preparation, iterative design and iterative development, according to Allen Interactions’ SAM overview.

The mapping shows a gap. This workflow stops at publish with a review date, so it does not replace evaluating whether learners can do the task afterward. If you measure outcomes, add that as a seventh stage.

The two models also pull in different directions. ADDIE is commonly presented as an ordered sequence of phases. SAM, by contrast, treats prototypes as “very rough” and advises against more than three iterations of any content area during early design, per the same Allen Interactions page. Gates plus capped rounds sit in between.

Pro tip: Prototype One Lesson Before You Draft All Of It. Before Gate 4, write one complete lesson and review only that with the SME. Allen Interactions’ SAM overview treats a prototype as more useful than a written description or storyboard. A pattern error caught in one lesson is also cheaper than the same error across all of them.

What if the SME misses a deadline or disagrees with the source?

If the SME misses a deadline, follow the fallback rule from the brief: send one reminder, then escalate to the project owner, then proceed and label the content “not SME-reviewed.” If the SME and the source document disagree, the project owner decides and records why.

The fallback rule is worth agreeing before it is needed. A simple version is a project-plan clause stating that content proceeds as provided if review is not finished by a set date. That is my suggestion, not an established standard, so get the SME and the project owner to agree to it at kickoff.

Do not use proceed-by-default on safety, compliance or regulated content. There, an unreviewed course should not ship, and the owner should find a second qualified reviewer. For conflicts, ask whether the source or the SME is the authority. A procedure owned by a quality team outranks one person’s memory of how the work is done, and the SME’s disagreement should go to that owner as a correction request.

When is this much process too much?

Skip most of the gates for a typo-level update or a one-page job aid. Use one combined brief-and-capture conversation and a single review. The full six-gate workflow earns its overhead when SME time is scarce, the course will be reused, or a client will see and sign off on it.

What should you do next?

Pick the next course on your list and write the one-page brief before touching content. Name the SME, the reviewers and the decision-maker, fix the review rounds, and paste the Gate 4 template into your project tracker. Run one project this way before changing anything.

If you run training as a business, note that SimpliAuthor and SimpliTrain are made by the same company that publishes this site. SimpliTrain’s page for training companies describes, in the vendor’s own words, its training management system for training companies. The workflow above works with any tools, including a spreadsheet and a shared folder.

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