The Role and Responsibility of the SME

It takes a large team of people to efficiently produce online instruction. These include Instructional Designer, Graphic Artist, DHTML Developer, and Project Manager, however one of the most important team members, the Subject Matter Expert, or SME (pronounced "smee"), often has the least information about their role and responsibilities.

The SME is an expert on a particular topic covered in the instruction; their main responsibility is to ensure content accuracy. SME's are also often involved in gathering and filtering content, designing the course and curriculum outlines, providing real-life context for instruction and assessments, evaluating the instruction for completeness, and occasionally in providing information about the course's intended audience.

The SME is critical to the successful development of WBT. More projects fail to meet their schedule, budget, and content quality goals because of SME problems than any other single cause. On the surface this doesn't make sense. SME's are usually bright, hardworking, people and often have a vested interest in the success of online training that they have contributed to. So why do they cause so many WBT projects to fail? Usually it is because of a lack of knowledge about their role, their responsibilities, and the time commitment needed.

Because each online training course will typically need SME's with expertise in the topics specific to that course, they usually aren't core members of the WBT team. Instead they typically have another full-time job within the client's organization. The SME is an expert in their domain, but is usually a complete novice at designing and developing WBT. Experienced WBT team members have already learned their roles and often forget that a new, temporary team member needs to be educated in this regard. If not corrected this can lead to many problems.

Some of the most common problems are:

• The SME thinking that they will just need to spend a few hours reviewing the course when it's done, and not having the time for typical SME activities such as gathering and filtering content, meeting with ID for interview, recommending additional SME's, helping develop the curriculum and course outline, reviewing lesson outlines, providing information for the ID writing storyboards, reviewing lesson storyboards, and reviewing final courseware.
  
  
• The SME becoming involved in aspects of the WBT that are another person's responsibility. Classic examples of this are:
  • The SME wanting to change the UI, design interactions, choose colors, choose fonts, or design navigation, often at the very end of the project after all these have been approved and programmed.
  • A SME that was brought in to discuss one specific topic or lesson re-designing or re-writing the entire course.
    
    
• Multiple SME reviews coming in to the ID at various times, sometimes after the review period is over, and often in total contradiction to each other.
  
  
• The SME changing scope in the middle of the project. This can happen in several ways:
  • Deciding after approving the outline that they forgot to include several topics that are absolutely necessary although they aren't included in the budget or schedule
  • Reviewing and re-reviewing finished lessons, adding just a little here and there until every lesson in the course is twice the size estimated. The budget will increase by more than twofold because the last few changes were made after programming was complete.
  • Deciding after the programming is complete that the previously approved interactions are not quite good enough and suggesting new ways of presenting the material.
    
    
• Having "junior" SME's review and approve the early phases of the course because the "senior" SME is too busy and important to review the course until it is finished. Once the senior SME becomes involved the entire course must be re-written and re-programmed.

Solutions include:

• Clearly define what is and what is not the SME's area of responsibility in advance, including a description of areas that are not their responsibility. Areas of responsibility include content accuracy and completeness. Areas that are not the SME's responsibility are UI design, writing style, graphic choices (except when they represent information inaccurately), and functionality of the courseware.
  
  
• If the overall course structure is already finalized and a SME is assigned to a specific topic within that course, be sure to identify that topic and let the SME know not to waste time reviewing and redesigning the rest of the course.
  
  
• Clearly define the time commitment for the SME early on. Because SME's usually have another full time job it is important that they understand how much time is required and agree to participate. An unavailable SME can bring your project to a screeching halt, or worse, cause it to drag on endlessly wreaking havoc on schedule and budget.
  
  
• Often you will have multiple SME's on a project. It is important to coordinate their input especially during reviews. Assign one "Super-SME" who is in charge of collecting and collating all of the other SME's reviews, resolving any conflicting opinions, and passing the information on to the ID.
  
  
• Scope creep is the most common cause of WBT projects' failure to meet schedule and budget. To avoid this it is important that the SME fully identify all topics at an early stage. The ID and PM must work with the SME to ensure that the original outline is as complete as possible and includes scope estimates. SME's will have an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject and are usually capable of creating a course many times the size originally scoped. It takes constant monitoring by the ID and PM to help the SME choose what content is essential, avoid extraneous details, and stay within scope.
  
  
• Many SME's are more familiar with stand-up instruction than WBT. Emphasize that the SME review for content accuracy must occur at the storyboard phase. It will kill your budget if the SME doesn't notice content problems until after programming is complete. In a similar vein, any SME who has final approval must be involved at the beginning, not just at the end. Because of this they may not understand the consequences of making changes late in the project. It is imperative that you set an approval schedule and explain the impact of missing review deadlines and especially of making changes after a storyboard has been approved.
  

Provided by Josh Harrison, Engagement Manager and Instructional Design Coordinator, MediaPro