Prince William Health SystemsFindings and Recommendations

Company LMS

Discovery and Analysis

February

Prepared for:

Prepared by:

Company

David A. Ealy, Ed.D.

CompanyDiscovery and Analysis

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Background

Current Environment – Training processes

Current Environment – Technical Infrastructure

Transition Planning

Risk and Mitigation Plan

Staffing and Budget

Summary Discovery and Analysis

January / Page 1

CompanyDiscovery and Analysis

Background

This document captures information from the Company learning management system (LMS) discovery and analysis project. The discovery sessions last from January 1st to the January 30thof 2015 and we’re conducted by David Ealy from Company.

The purpose of the discovery and analysis project is to provide Company with a baseline of information around the organization’s training needs and potential LMS purchase and implementation this year. This was intended to be the first step in process and to provide enough information to mitigate risks and provide a strategic connection point for the next phase of LMS selection.

Stakeholder Register:

Particular attention was paid to making sure each stakeholder was asked the same set of questions and given the same amount of time to answer.

Introduction

The scope of the discovery and analysis is to address the following topics at a high-level:

  • Background Information
  • Stakeholder Identification
  • Current Environment – Processes and Technical
  • Deployment Plan and Schedule
  • Key Success Measures
  • Risk and Mitigation Plan
  • Budget and Staffing Constraints
  • Key Milestones
  • Training, Maintenance and Support
  • Risks

Each of these topics are addressed in this report.

There will be a summary findings and recommendations section at the end of this report.

Current Environment – Training processes

Upon analysis of the information, the training processes that were most noted during the discovery calls were as follows:

  1. Most stakeholders don’t have extensive or any experience with an enterprise-level LMS and related training processes.

Recommendations:

  • Change management, change management, change management. This will need to be top priority during the next phases of LMS selection and implementation. Getting these stakeholders on board with the selection and implementation will help adoption, use and overall organizational training processes.
  1. Lack of general structure or lack of a formal top-down, organization-wide training strategy and protocols

Recommendations:

  • Develop aLearningstrategy to include a mission or vision statement that utilizes the LMS features (e.g., a new hire curriculum)
  1. Lack of standardization(or there’s variability in training)

Recommendations:

  • Once the LMS is in place, training by role (or new hire training) can be created using a “curriculum” feature that organizes (and prioritizes) multiple types of training (
  1. Lack of tracking employee progressand/or lack of reporting capabilities (e.g., at six months, nine months, etc.)

Recommendations:

Current Environment – Technical Infrastructure

For the technical infrastructure discovery, the sessions revealed:

  1. No major barriers from a technology perspective, meaning, could the organizations’ technical infrastructure support an enterprise-wide LMS implementation? Yes. Company could support either hosted solution or an internally hosted LMS, if appropriately staffed.

Considerations:

  1. Training systems or learning records reside in multiple locations (one repository or system of record is needed)

Recommendations:

Transition Planning

The discovery session revealed the following items to be considered regarding transition planning from current state to future state (LMS):

Key Success Measures

Having a common understanding of what success looks like for the LMS implementation amongst the stakeholders will be critical. Here is a short list of items that are typically addressed in any organization-wide implementation:

  1. What are the expectations from this project?
  2. How do these expectations support the short-term and long-term business objectives of the organization?

In addition to these items, it is recommended that particular attention be paid to the following:

Key Milestones

Here are some key milestones to consider (not including LMS selection or Go Live date, which is assumed):

  • Create a LMS implementation project charter and project plan
  • Create a change management plan with a risk register (can be a subsidiary of a larger project plan)

Preliminary Implementation Schedule

This preliminary implementation schedule is to be used as a guide only. These dates are meant to generate conversation and it is assumed that the key milestones will be prioritized and sequenced according to the project plan.

Feb / March / April / May / June / July / August / Sept / O, N, D
Formalize Requirements
Build Business Case
Decision-Selection /
Pilot /

Training, Maintenance and Support

The training, maintenance and support considerations will depend on the LMS vendor to some degree. Typically LMS vendors, including SaaS only vendors, will offer training, maintenance and support.

It’s important to note that the discovery sessions yielded the following topics related to training, maintenance and support, consider:

Risk and Mitigation Plan

Here is a risk and mitigation plan for review:

Risk / Mitigation Plan
The LMS is a new concept – lack of utilization and adoption /
  • Prioritize change management
  • Prioritize a communications plan
  • Build milestones that are custom for each department
  • Focus on the WIIFM for stakeholders
  • Build a LAC

Administration issues /
  • Front-load a resource or resources
  • Have LAC build an administration plan
  • Work with vendor to establish need to focus on transition support

Staffing and Budget

Here are some items to consider based on the discovery sessions:

Staffing

Given the “newness” of an organization-wide LMS at Company, a key factor to consider is who will be administering and “running” the LMS, who will be the SPOT? Here are some considerations:

Budget

Budget guidance has already been provided to Company. And, the discovery and analysis did not reveal any major budget issues, but considerations include:

Summary Discovery and Analysis

The following items are summary findings:

  1. Change management
  1. Communication

Term / Definition
General
Course / In Meridian, General Course is where you create and manage non-standards based courses (SCORM or AICC). The course can consist of a URL, a PowerPoint presentation, a Word document, a series of HTML files or any other supported file types that can be uploaded. General courses track enrollment, start date and completion date, but not scores or other progress status.
Classroom
Course / Classroom courses are created and edited by authorized users in this area. A classroom course is taught by an instructor in a physical location. Classroom courses have sections, and sections have one or more events (see Events, Recurrence and Related Information in the Appendix for help with creating and editing events).
  1. Key milestones
  1. Administration – long-term
  1. Use a pilot strategy and utilize the internal expertise of Steve Newton and his experience with Carrier’s Edge.

January / Page 1