How do you do KTLO for learning programs?

KTLO stands for “Keep the Lights On”. I have seen this used in IT departments many times when referring to application or services they deploy, but they feel is pretty static or may not need much support or resources to keep it up and running. More than likely, you would call this maintenance or sustainment and these are activities that contribute to the relevance of learning programs. We all know that you need to support and maintain the learning that’s has been rolled out. But, we also need the discipline to not include the effort to develop new learning. The tricky part is deciding, especially in this day and age, what sustainment is and what new work is.

For me sustainment activities include, but not limited to:

• Customer ad-hoc requests for information
• Minor changes to training materials
• Standard updates
• Reports and metrics
• A quarterly content review cadence with our key stakeholders to review changes in content freshness, practice etc.

To go a little deeper, here is where I focus on sustainment work and standards I apply:

• Maintain most current content. Standard: No more than 6 months before content review to ensure learning material is current
• Ensure integrity of the content. Standard: All links are valid. All content is valid (videos play, PowerPoints show up, documents are readable). No support material or related/linked courses are deprecated.
• Track Metrics. Standard: Student satisfaction and other metrics are tracked monthly. Any significant changes in metrics are subject to Root Cause Analysis.   
• Stakeholder Engagement. Standard: Every program has Stakeholder oversight group. It meets quarterly (semi-annually) with at least 80% attendance. Any vacancies are immediately filled to ensure continuity

As you can see above, sustainment is not necessarily easy and free of resources. You must estimate how many resource hours you will need. We may not always do this, but we should.