🌐Overview

Creating a realistic and flexible project timeline is vital for managing an OER initiative. The timeline should reflect your team's capacity, constraints, and collaboration style. Without careful pacing and regular checkpoints, OER projects may face delays, burnout, or rushed outcomes that overlook important quality checks like accessibility and licensing review.

At this point, teams shift from vision to action. This involves identifying key stages of your project, such as content drafting, review, editing, formatting, accessibility, and publishing. Estimate how long each phase will take and align these with institutional timelines (flex weeks, finals, and summer breaks, etc.) and with team availability.

📖 Table of Contents

Backward Design: Start With The End in Mind
Timeline Planning and Tracking
- Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)
Using a Timeline Toolkit
- Timeline Red Flags

✔️ Backward Design

Start by identifying your final deliverables and their due dates. Work backwards to identify major phases and milestones. For instance, if you must finish your textbook by August 15 for fall adoption, consider:

When must all drafts be completed?
When does peer review or accessibility remediation need to begin?
When must you engage with library staff or upload to LibreTexts or Pressbooks?

Backward design helps you safeguard important production times. It also adds buffer time for any unexpected issues. You’ll also want to align major phases with grant reporting deadlines and publication requirements.

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✔️ Timeline Planning and Tracking

An effective timeline isn’t just about tasks; it’s about people. Some team members may be available only off-contract; others may teach full loads, on parental leave, or manage other grants. Check real-time capacity. Then, think about staggering assignments or setting clear response time expectations. Use the Capacity Scan worksheet from page 3.1 to spot possible delays or overextensions.

Institutional rhythms matter too. At California community colleges, for instance:

Quarter system schools may need to avoid scheduling key work during Week 11 or finals week.
Semester system schools often face interruptions during winter break, spring break, and May graduation crunch.
Flex weeks and intersession periods may open pockets of opportunity or cause team members to disappear for workshops or course prep.

Build a timeline that reflects these cycles, not one that ignores them

Talk to the team: Summer availability varies widely. The project needs a shared timeline, but individual schedules can vary. So, plan ahead and set expectations early.
Remember equity: Adjunct faculty often juggle survival jobs across multiple campuses. Recognize these labor demands. Work for fair pay, realistic deadlines, and equal workload distribution.

📌 Work Breakdown Structure

A Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) is a project planning tool for breaking a large project into smaller, manageable parts. The section below can be expanded to learn more about WBS

✏️ Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

WBS organizes tasks into a hierarchical structure, helping teams clarify what needs to be done, who is responsible, and by when. Each level becomes more detailed, moving from broad phases to specific deliverables or tasks. This section outlines a potential timeline for developing an OER

Why add WBS to your toolkit?

Clarity: Everyone knows their role and timeline
Progress Tracking: You can track task completion
Accountability: Easier to delegate and follow up
Scalability: Works for solo or multi-author projects

The Major Phases include

Planning
Content Development
Review & Accessibility
Publishing & Dissemination

Planning

Define learning outcomes
Draft timeline and milestones
Assign chapter leads and contributors

Content Development

Write Chapter 1
Write Chapter 2
Curate or create graphics and tables
Add in-text citations and references

Review & Accessibility

Internal peer review of all chapters
Apply accessibility checks (headings, alt text, links)
Conduct a student usability review

Publishing & Dissemination

Format content in LibreTexts
License final content and add attribution
Upload to Libre Commons and the campus repository
Create promotional materials for faculty adoption

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✔️ Using a Timeline Toolkit

Building an OER is not a linear process, and it rarely moves at a uniform pace. The value of a shared timeline isn’t just in tracking deliverables; it lies in helping your team:

Stay grounded in shared deadlines and commitments
Anticipate institutional rhythms (like finals week, flex days, or summer slowdowns)
Keep the project scope realistic by showing the full scope of tasks
Prevent burnout by flagging crunch periods and long gaps early

Timelines should not be static. Revisit your plan every 2–4 weeks with your core team, especially after key milestones or setbacks. Treat it as a living document that evolves with the work and the people doing it. You can use a simple version of the Timelines and Task template in the folder or build more defined ones for your project needs.

📌 Timeline Red Flags

When creating a timeline, watch for these red flags.

No draft deadline or unclear expectations for authors
Final upload scheduled after fall schedule deadlines
No buffer time for review, formatting, or approvals
Misalignment with academic breaks, Flex Week, or key absences
No contingency plan for dropped contributors or reviewer delays

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🐙 Wisdom: Embrace the wisdom of the octopus and use multiple tracking tools with your timeline template. Use color coding, hidden tabs, or private notes to keep mitigation checkpoints flexible and responsive. Keep them out of the spotlight until you need them.