Beware the siren's seductive song. It will absolutely destroy your conversion/transition project.

Too often, people think courseware development is so quick, easy (and cheap) - particularly transitioning courseware from classroom to web deployment or creating another similar from an existing (e.g., between models of a product line).

But what a siren's song of disaster such a misconception becomes when actually try to transition the material. 

Case in point; recently I was tasked with transitioning training content between two different models of machinery from the same product family. I'll refer to them from here on as Model A and Model B.

I'd been provided the audio narration text from the existing elearning course for Model A and was trying to convert it to the features, functions and operation of Model B variant of the product line. Similar, yes; but with enough differences to require a thorough screening of the content and a lot of research. As the saying goes, "the devil is in the details."

So over the course of a day, I spent 3 hours researching various technical publications on both models trying to verify whether or not one component of Model A was installed in Model B and if so, exactly how it functioned in B compared to A. I finally had to consult an experienced technician who'd spent about three decades of his life maintaining and repairing the two models. Even so, it took him about 40 minutes chunking through a gozillion pages of the maintenance manuals, wiring diagrams and a whole host of other technical documents just trying to answer that one question one one part of the machine.

That's the kind of time- and budget-eating activity that folks who haven't ever done courseware development either don't know or - even worse - if they won't listen about from those who do know - can really bite 'em in da bahind on a courseware transition project.