The 5A Method

Five questions every modernisation decision has to answer. Mobile, web, AI, content, pricing. Same five questions.

This is the methodology I run inside every Modern EdTech Roadmap engagement. It's also given away publicly so prospects can self-educate before we ever talk. If you can't make all five A's stand up for the thing you're about to ship, you're bolting it on.

Start with Audit ↓ Apply the method to my org →
Overview

The five steps at a glance.

Each step is a question. The deeper sections below answer it with worked examples from real products.

A1 Step 1

Audit

Where are your users losing time, energy or confidence right now?

Modernisation's only value is reclaiming time, energy or confidence. We audit the user's actual workflow — including the parts that happen outside your product (the planner, the staffroom, Sunday night at the kitchen table). Opportunities surface from the friction map, not from a feature brainstorm. The Audit deliverable is a heat-map of where mobile, AI, web, content and pricing changes could each earn their keep, ranked by adoption likelihood.

A2 Step 2

Anchor

What structure must the product respect to be useful in a classroom?

Build a constrained library of resource types, structures and curriculum mappings, and let every product surface — AI generation, mobile, web, content — operate within that, not on top of it. Worked example: ConnectedPE's 14-resource library — every generation and every screen lands inside a known teacher-ready shape, anchored to a curriculum and a year level. That's why teachers use it.

A3 Step 3

Architect

Build, buy, or wrap?

Some features should be wrapped around a foundation model or off-the-shelf SaaS with constraints. Some need bespoke infrastructure. Some shouldn't be built at all — they should be partnerships. The Architect stage produces a roadmap that names every decision across mobile, web, AI and content, with the technical reasoning attached so engineering and product stay aligned.

A4 Step 4

Adopt

How do users find, trust, and use the new thing?

Adopt maps the in-product surfacing, the onboarding flow, the proof-of-value moment in the first 60 seconds, the social proof loop across schools, and the change-management plan for your existing customers. Without this, every previous A is wasted work.

A5 Step 5

Amplify

Free the front. Charge the back.

Amplify designs the freemium-to-paid path, the school/district expansion motion, the conference and community amplification, and the partner / integration surface. The output is a pricing and growth plan that captures the value of your modernised product without breaking the trust you've built with teachers.

A1
Step one

Audit

Where are your users losing time, energy or confidence right now?

Most companies start by asking "where could we add a new feature?". That's the wrong question. The right question is "where are users losing time, energy or confidence right now?" — because the only justification for any modernisation, AI or otherwise, is reclaiming those.

Audit the user's actual workflow — including the parts that happen outside your product. Their planner. The staffroom. Sunday night at the kitchen table. The opportunities surface from a friction map, not a feature brainstorm.

Worked example

In a typical engagement, Audit produces a heat-map of 15–25 friction points across the teacher week, ranked by adoption likelihood. Each gets a tag — mobile, web, AI, content, pricing — and the top three move to Anchor.

A2
Step two

Anchor

What structure must the product respect to be useful in a classroom?

Free-form software is the wrong shape for education. Every surface — AI generation, mobile screen, content page, pricing tier — needs to be anchored in the curriculum, the standards, the unit, the year level, the school's scope and sequence. Anchoring isn't a prompt or a setting — it's an architecture.

Build a constrained library of resource types, structures and curriculum mappings, and let every product surface operate within that, not on top of it.

Worked example: ConnectedPE

ConnectedPE's 14-resource library — every screen, every generation, every export lands inside a known teacher-ready shape (lesson plan, warm-up, assessment, etc.), anchored to a curriculum and a year level. Teachers don't stare at a blank field; they pick the shape. That's why they use it.

A3
Step three

Architect

Build, buy, or wrap?

The architecture decision is where most education companies waste 12 months. The build / buy / wrap matrix depends on the workflow stage, the teacher's tolerance for error, and the regulatory surface — student data, privacy, age-gating.

  • WrapFoundation model, off-the-shelf SaaS or framework with constraints — best for surfaces with high user tolerance for editing.
  • BuyExisting edtech infra licensed in — best for non-differentiating pieces with strict compliance needs.
  • BuildBespoke infrastructure — only where the feature is core to differentiation and adoption.
  • SkipSome features shouldn't be built at all. They should be partnerships, or omitted.
Worked example: Fitness Tests

For Fitness Tests, the diagnosis mattered as much as the build: I discovered the iOS app was misrouting all its analytics through the web stream via Measurement Protocol. The fix was wrap, not build. Same instinct applies to mobile, AI, and pricing surfaces — name the smallest possible thing to own.

A4
Step four

Adopt

How do teachers find, trust, and use the new thing?

The hardest part of edtech is not building the thing. It's getting teachers to adopt the thing. Adoption is where generalist consultants disappear — and the stage that decides whether your mobile launch, AI rollout, or new pricing model actually pays off.

  • ▸In-product surfacing — where the AI feature shows up and what it interrupts
  • ▸The proof-of-value moment in the first 60 seconds
  • ▸The social proof loop — teacher-to-teacher inside a school, school-to-school across a district
  • ▸The change-management plan for your existing customer base
A5
Step five

Amplify

Free the front. Charge the back.

The right monetisation pattern in education isn't "premium feature behind paywall." It's free experience, paid persistence — let users feel the value, charge for the workflow that lets them save, share, manage and reuse, at the school or district level.

Amplify designs the freemium-to-paid path, the school/district expansion motion, the conference and community amplification, and the partner/integration surface. The output is a pricing plan that captures the value of your modernised product without breaking trust.

Worked example: consumer vs enterprise spread

Consumer app priced at $129/year. Enterprise rollout at $12,500/year. The spread is intentional and is set by who gets value from persistence — not by what AI "costs."

Get the full 5A Method PDF

A 10-page, no-fluff breakdown of how I run AI implementation for education companies. Worked examples from real products.

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  • → One page per A, with the worked example expanded
  • → The teacher-adoption checklist I use on every client
  • → The build / buy / wrap matrix in full

Ready to apply this to your roadmap?

The 5A Method is the framework. The Modern EdTech Roadmap is what happens when I run it inside your org for six weeks.

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