3.2 Creating a work plan for voice data collection

Work planning means organizing tasks, resources, and timelines to complete a project well. When collecting , a work plan helps you to manage complex steps. These steps involve people, technology, quality checks, and community involvement, especially in low-resource or challenging settings.

Key parts of a work plan include:

• clear project phases

• milestones with goals you can measure (like “5,000 prompts uploaded” or “10 hours of recordings validated”)

• a detailed timeline to show the order of tasks and which ones depend on others (for example, contributor onboarding depends on the platform being ready)

• resource planning so that you use staff, software, and funds efficiently.

Ways to be more efficient in a work plan include:

• running tasks in parallel when possible. Examples from projects include:

  • assessing the capacity of the community and starting to engage with them while setting up the projects and creating text prompts,

  • recording and validating the data in parallel,

  • preparing licensing while data collection projects are in progress.

• building in extra time, especially with . With the TWB Voice pilot projects, extra time was needed:

  • to create and clean text prompts because resources were scarce,

  • to engage and train contributors who were new to digital tools,

  • to check the quality of the recordings—only those who had recorded at least one hour of speech were allowed to rate others, so the pool of available raters was small relative to those recording.

Key tips: How can I make a practical plan for potential risks?

Unexpected delays and challenges are common in low-resource language projects. You should include a risk management matrix in your work plan to help you plan for these. The basic principle of a risk management matrix is to: identify potential risks: for example, delays in the available texts, bugs on the platform that stop you from collecting data, or low community engagement. assess each risk by how likely it is and its impact using a scale (often low/medium/high) to assess how likely the risk is to happen and how much it would impact delivery of the project. plan what to do to prevent each risk, and what steps you will take if it happens. You can download a basic example of a risk management matrix for voice data collection in low-resource language settings. This template is based on experience from the TWB Voice pilot projects. You can adapt it to suit your specific project. Many project management tools also have built-in risk management features.