The purpose of this paper is to describe a case study conducted to examine the application of Merrill's First Principles of Instruction ("Educ Technol Res Dev" 50(3):43-59, 2002, "First principles of instruction," Pfeiffer, San Francisco, 2012) to determine how they were implemented during a fast-paced project that required the creation of a large number of online modules. Design and development research (Richey and Klein in "Design and development research," Routledge/Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, 2007) was employed to investigate the conditions and factors that impacted the decisions made by a design team including project leads, team leads, and instructional designers. Findings revealed that project requirements, personnel, physical setting, time, designer experience, training and team meetings influenced the use of the First Principles of Instruction.