Last week, a Subject Matter Expert (SME) working with me on a current project apologized for the many changes and additions he made to the Instructor Led course I am creating with the help of his expertise. In reality, his changes were relatively minor. All parties had already signed off on the objectives and detailed outline of the course (which includes activities and timing), so changes to fundamental content and direction at this point would have been unusual, though not unheard of.
I encourage SMEs to make suggestions, include thoughts, questions, additions and so on as they are reviewing materials. This is where we want to catch anything that might have been forgotten. As for the rest of it, handing over too much information is always better than limited information.
A client or SME can provide me with a 400 slide powerpoint as an additional resource and I can separate the “nice to know” from the “need to know” (and also leave out the “totally unrelated”)– but I can’t include the “need to know” information if I don’t have it. So while I appreciated the “heads up” from the SME, I assured him that there was no need for any apologies, especially when it comes to content. The more I have the better.