[dannymacc]

There are a lot of great answers in this thread. I can't dispute any of them. I can only add my experience, just to help amalgamate development time. I work in-house and have several things happening at once, also. I have tracked my time per project, so I have a pretty good sense of how I work, and how much time to allocate. If the course is very straight forward - get-some-bullet-points-and-take-a-short-quiz-type of course - I run about 20:1 for the course creation time. That's 20 hours of PowerPoint/Engage/Quizmaker time. That doesn't include analysis, or sign-off meetings. That's my development time. This is also a straight "cut'n'paste" approach, where material is provided by someone else. If I have to write anything, it takes longer.

I've also gotten to the point that I don't have to flowchart every project, and created enough templates and pre-built slides to speed up my development. When I estimate delivery for a project, I tell the client what my hours will be, using a 40:1 ratio, and a caveat that I will have to sprinkle this project throughout the rest of my workload. Depending on the rest of my workload, I might be able to get that done in 2-4 weeks. I have had one project where my manager pulled me out of a class and gave away all my obligations, due to huge client pressure, so I could put together a course in 3 days. I worked 12 hours, 16 hours, and 8 hours to get that one done!