Audit before you decide what to change
Modernization projects fail when they start with a decision to rebuild the catalogue rather than with evidence about what is used, what is effective, and what is actively harmful. Begin with an audit that inventories every asset, its age, its owner, its view or completion data, and its topic coverage.
Then classify. A large share of most catalogues falls into three groups: content that is still accurate, well used, and effective, which needs only a light touch; content that is accurate but poorly presented or poorly structured, which is a refresh candidate; and content that is outdated, duplicative, or irrelevant, which should be retired. Retiring content is often the highest-return part of a modernization programme and the hardest to get approved, because someone still owns it.
Include the question of whether some content should become a different format. A long course built for a classroom that now serves an on-the-job audience may be better delivered as a job aid plus a short orientation, which is a cheaper change than a rebuild.
Prioritise on impact and risk, not on age
Age is a weak proxy for value. A five-year-old course on a fast-moving technical topic may be more urgent than a ten-year-old course on a stable policy that still performs well. Prioritise using the combination of business criticality, usage volume, performance gap, compliance exposure, and the cost of continued inaction.
Compliance and safety content usually sits at the top because of risk rather than performance, and the decision is often about evidence and currency rather than engagement. High-usage content that performs poorly is the strongest signal that a redesign is justified, and it usually has the data to prove the redesign worked.
For a guide to evaluating the design quality of what already exists, so that the refresh addresses the right weaknesses, see our guide on how to evaluate instructional design quality. Also consider whether a partial refresh is enough. Rebuilding a course that works but looks dated is a common and expensive form of modernisation, and it often produces little change in behaviour.
Set the modernization standard before you rebuild
Define a house standard for the modernized catalogue, covering template and visual system, accessibility conformance, content structure, navigation and search, assessment approach, metadata and tagging, and the technology the content will run in. Without a standard, modernization produces a patchwork that looks worse than what it replaced.
The standard should also govern how content is authored going forward, not only how legacy content is rewritten. Modernisation that leaves the underlying production process unchanged tends to decay back to the old state within a couple of years, because the new content is still made the old way.
Decide how much to standardise. Heavy templating accelerates production and consistency but limits what a subject matter expert can do without a specialist.
Light templating protects flexibility but makes the catalogue look inconsistent. Most enterprises do best with a small number of clearly defined patterns, each mapped to a specific content type, rather than a single rigid template for everything.
Sequence the work to protect the business
Do not attempt a full catalogue rewrite in one pass. Start with a small pilot that tests the standard: pick a high-value course, modernise it under the new house style, and release it. This surfaces the hidden costs of the approach, such as how much subject matter expert time a full refresh really requires, before you have committed the whole programme.
Plan for a portfolio approach afterwards, where a long tail of shorter modules receives a templated refresh and only a small number receive a full rebuild. The pilot also becomes the reference example that the rest of the programme is measured against, and it is the most persuasive artefact you will have for stakeholder buy-in.
In parallel, deal with the retirement track. Publish a retirement list, notify the owners, redirect the learners, and keep an accessible archive where policy requires it. A modernization programme that leaves a large dead catalogue in place has not reduced the maintenance burden it was supposed to reduce.
Measure outcomes, not delivery volume
Track business measures, not just the number of courses modernized. Completion rates, time to complete, assessment scores, and observed behaviour change in the flow of work are the meaningful indicators, and they should be measured on the modernized assets against their own prior performance rather than against other content.
Also measure the cost of the new production model, because the point of modernization is usually to make future content cheaper and faster to produce. If a new template and authoring standard increase the per-module cost by a large factor, the programme is unlikely to be sustainable even if the current output looks better.
Finally, plan how the programme is governed. A named owner, a published design standard, a review process for new content, and a mechanism for flagging content that is going stale are what keep the gains. Our guide on how to build an enterprise content production budget covers how to fund a multi-year programme, and our guide on assessing content quality before full production covers the front-end quality gate that stops poor content being modernized in the first place.
Commonly overlooked pitfalls
- Starting a modernization programme by deciding to rebuild everything rather than by auditing what is used and effective.
- Prioritising by content age rather than by business criticality, usage, and compliance risk.
- Rebuilding content that already performs well and only needed a visual refresh.
- Leaving the underlying production process unchanged, so the catalogue decays back to its old state.
- Neglecting the retirement track, which means the maintenance burden the programme targeted never falls.
Next steps
- Run a catalogue audit covering assets, owners, usage, performance, and duplication, and classify each item.
- Build a prioritisation model using criticality, usage, performance gap, and compliance exposure.
- Publish a house modernization standard covering design, accessibility, structure, metadata, and technology.
- Modernize one high-value course as a pilot and use it to test the standard and the true effort involved.
- Define business measures and a governance owner, and set a review cycle for content going stale.
Related guides
Put this into practice
The vendor evaluation checklist and the RFP template turn a guide into a process you can run this week.