LMS Implementation: All The Useful Details We Ought To Know
These questions frame some crucial tasks that impact any successful LMS implementation project:
- Did you create a needs analysis/LMS taxonomy flowchart first, based on informational interviews?
- Did you clean your data, with data integrity intact?
In the real world, LMS like-kind components such as role workflows, events, and instances exist and occur in parallel, depending simultaneously on the schedule and timeline of said events, unbeknownst other than to the attendees themselves. However, in a cloud-based LMS platform, these components are all stand-alone components; therefore, without timely and accurate input from the LMS operator, historical data integrity will not be accurate.
The input of all intentional and targeted system requirements from all relevant parties that will be impacted by the implementation of the LMS should be executed before choosing an LMS. This helps expedite the necessary components, functions, and features required during the implementation process until a fully functioning and optimized LMS is actually ready for pilot and official launch, contingent on the piloting phase results.
In other words, the components of an LMS have no value or purpose unless there is an intentional and logical link or connection to other components. The challenge arises when these components are not fully developed as is the constant status of any LMS platform. The solution is constant communication between the LMS vendor and its customers so that they are notified in a timely manner when component upgrades occur.
The crucial notifications and communications must occur in order to answer the following questions:
- How will we know how each component will be connected in order to be agile enough to adapt to your organization's new strategies at a drop of a hat, should the feature or function be upgraded?
- What can be configured efficiently enough to adapt and improve team member performance?
- Will the new change be easily adopted into the current workflow, and how easily will the new process be embraced by the learners?
- Has the way that learning content is consumed substantially changed or will it need to be revised?
- If revisions during content development are required, how long will that take?
- If a revision overlaps into already active content learners are consuming in the LMS, how quickly can content be updated by developers? Are there sufficient resources available?
- How much retraining will be required, should it become necessary?
Implementation of a successful LMS is key to the legacy of an organization's effective learning culture. Not only the linkages of components and features of the LMS but also the dependencies impact the workflows of both operations and systems, especially if you consider the fact that the content drives both the components and the connections to the role workflows. Context must be analyzed first before it is developed, and before system requirements and governances are agreed upon by all parties concerned.
Is your content already connected to your components? It is only the first step in this reverse engineering process.
Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite... draw diagrams, use post-it notes, be organic.
Use pen and paper, draw data structures, a storyboard, notate emotions, anything to brainstorm. Communicate with all parties involved. Showing them preliminary sketches if time is a major consideration is fine, as long as the flowchart is easily discernable by all.
