World Rugby – a project manager's insight

Dynamic Insights

World Rugby – a Project Managers insight

BY DAVID PRYDE

17 SEPTEMBER 25

What's it like to project manage the digital training for a major world sporting event? Dynamic's Project Manager, Dave Pryde offers some insights.

In this post, Dynamic’s Dave Pryde, tells us what’s involved in the planning, preparation and execution of a multi-faceted project to deliver a huge programme of elearning for the Women’s Rugby World Cup.

Behind the Scenes: Building the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 Training Programme

Since its inception in 1991, the Women’s Rugby World Cup has grown from strength to strength — and in 2025, history was made again. With matches staged across England, the tournament brought world-class rugby to more fans than ever before.

The 10th edition saw the world’s 16 best teams and rugby’s biggest stars take centre stage, all chasing the ultimate prize: being crowned World Champions.

But behind the scenes, the true stars were the 1,500 volunteers, over 500 paid staff, and countless contractors whose passion and dedication made the tournament possible.

For me, it was an honour to play a role in this moment of rugby history — leading the design and delivery of the eLearning training programme that prepared every single person working at the tournament to deliver an unforgettable Women’s Rugby World Cup.

World Rugby has an ambition to become a global leader in the delivery of international events, growing audiences in both established and emerging markets. To make this vision a reality, they partnered with Dynamic Business Services — and I had the privilege of managing the project.

'Welcome to your training' video

The Challenge

The scale of the workforce was immense. From volunteers and paid staff to contractors, roles spanned venue management, media operations, accreditation, technology, broadcast, match management, fan services, health and safety, customer service, and more.

Training needed to achieve two things at once:

Targeted

Be highly targeted to specific roles.

Engaging

Be flexible and engaging enough to work across a wide demographic.

The team view

“To meet this challenge, we developed six learner personas — from the enthusiastic student volunteer to the time-pressed contractor — and designed a programme that worked for all of them. Our approach was a blend of core (“recommended”) activities everyone needed to complete, alongside optional (“spoke”) activities tailored to each learner’s interest, role, and availability.

“This model gave learners ownership of their training journey, while ensuring critical knowledge was consistent across the workforce. It also allowed the programme to grow and refresh sustainably across future tournaments.”

Henry Fuller

Head of Learning Experience Design

The programme in numbers

113 Unique Elearning Activities

19 courses made up of 113 unique eLearning activities, developed in a range of authoring tools including Evolve, Storyline, Elementor, and bespoke HTML.

33 Badges

33 digital badges awarded for achievements.

38 Presenter-led Videos

38 presenter-led videos, enriched with motion graphics and imagery.

Dozens of Bespoke Graphics

Dozens of bespoke graphics, thumbnails, and course headers to bring the programme to life in the learning management system.

113 Unique Elearning Activities

19 courses made up of 113 unique eLearning activities, developed in a range of authoring tools including Evolve, Storyline, Elementor, and bespoke HTML.

33 Badges

33 digital badges awarded for achievements.

38 Presenter-led Videos

38 presenter-led videos, enriched with motion graphics and imagery.

Dozens of Bespoke Graphics

Dozens of bespoke graphics, thumbnails, and course headers to bring the programme to life in the learning management system.

My role and the team

As project manager, my role was to bring all the moving parts together. That meant:

Creating and maintaining the project plan
Running regular planning meetings with World Rugby and internal stakeholders
Planning and directing filming shoots
Reviewing, testing, and signing off content
Overseeing the set-up of courses on the learning management system

Internally, I worked closely with an incredible team of instructional designers, creative designers, developers, and our resource manager. Each had a unique role to play — and it was my job to make sure everything aligned and moved forward at pace.

The process

The project began with discovery sessions to scope the learning experience design. From there, we produced programme maps and wireframes, followed by detailed scripts in Word documents that captured the proposed learning flow. Each script went through rounds of review and client sign-off before moving into storyboarding and asset creation.

Design was a crucial stage. Every learning activity had to reflect the exclusive brands various while also being clear, engaging, and accessible. Once approved, designs were passed to development, along with the required assets such as photography or graphics.

Learning on a grand scale

Given the sheer scale—113 activities, each with multiple assets—organisation was critical. I set up a dedicated Microsoft Teams channel with separate threads for each activity. This centralised all scripts, designs, amends, share links, and notes.

At first, this was a new way of working for the team, but it quickly paid off. One developer told me:

“Initially I didn’t get it, but I quickly picked it up and I think it’s a great way of organising everything—knowing you can search for the activity title and find exactly what you need.”

Another added:

“It was really efficient having the Teams channel to host all amends and links in one place. You could also see other work going on for World Rugby if you needed inspiration.”

I also used Smartsheet to manage project plans, task lists, and asset libraries, giving both the client and internal team visibility of progress at all times.

Challenges and solutions

Like any major project, this one had its challenges:

Working with different brands and limited client assets, while meeting very specific creative requirements.
Producing a high volume of bite-sized activities rather than traditional long-form modules — a more engaging approach, but far more resource-intensive.
Managing workload in Storyline, where each version needed its own theme and variation, taking longer than expected.
Designing for the learning management system, which meant creating not just elearning activities, but also thumbnails, dashboard graphics, and badges.

The key to overcoming these challenges was stringent project management and constant collaboration. By keeping communication open and structured, and by adopting new tools and approaches, the team delivered at scale without losing quality.

Get a feel for it: snapshots of course materials

Outcome and impact

At the time of writing, the training programme is live and in use — and the early feedback has been fantastic:

“Really enjoying going through the training modules so far and looking forward to more — I’ve learned a lot!”

Feedback from course participant

“Every time I see this it makes me happy. It is so good!”

Feedback from course participant

“Thanks for sending the finalised training through, it’s looking fantastic!”

Feedback from course participant

For me, the biggest impact has been seeing how such a complex project came together through teamwork. The programme not only prepared a diverse workforce for the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025, but also set a blueprint for how large-scale, global sporting events can deliver training that is engaging, inclusive, and effective.

Reflections:
the PM's view

Managing this project was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career so far. It challenged me to think creatively, organise relentlessly, and lead a team through an ambitious delivery schedule — all while keeping the learner experience at the heart of every decision.

Most of all, it reminded me that behind every world-class sporting event is a workforce that needs to feel confident, informed, and inspired. Helping to make that happen for the Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025 was a privilege I won’t forget.

Dynamic Insights

World Rugby – a Project Managers insight

BY DAVID PRYDE

17 SEPTEMBER 25

What's it like to project manage the digital training for a major world sporting event? Dynamic's Project Manager, Dave Pryde offers some insights.