LMS Selection Team and Stakeholders

As I discussed in my post LMS Selection Process, I’m preparing for my part of an upcoming session at DevLearn on LMS Selection as part of The Learning Management Systems Symposium. I'm preparing this by posting my thoughts and notes prior to creating my slides with the hope of getting feedback.

Thanks to everyone who has already contributed. There was some great feedback on my last post - see the comments. I hope you'll continue to give me feedback as I go.

In my previous post I presented my high-level LMS Selection Process. My general impression from the feedback is that there wasn't much debate around that process, but there was quite a bit of input and clarification on the details. So, this post simply captures thoughts around who should be involved in the LMS Selection.

Great article by Karl Kapp - Selecting an E-learning Solution, Part 1: Who Should be on Your E-Learning Selection Committee? He includes:

• Training/Learning Manager or Director (Chief Learning Officer)
• Information Technology
• Procurement
• Learners
• Line Supervisors
• Business Unit Leaders
• Sales and Marketing
• Customer Service
• Safety/Compliance

This is a great starting point. A few quick thoughts / changes:

• I'll change Procurement to Legal / Procurement
• I would group Learners and Line Supervisors under an umbrella of "end users".
• I would similarly group each of the functional areas and business units.
• Add future LMS administrators
• Add HR / OD
• Add Help Desk / Internal Support
  

There's also an issue of identifying who is part of the different levels of involvement in the process. I normally define:

• Core LMS Selection Team
• Full LMS Selection Team
• Stakeholders

The Core LMS Selection Team does the day-to-day work on the project. This is often a relatively small group of 4-5 people and should definitely include the primary manager responsible for the process and a future LMS administrator.

The Full LMS Selection Team includes the list above, but they come together during key points in the process, e.g., agreeing to the process, providing requirements, viewing demos, participating in hands-on, etc.

Stakeholders include people who are not directly involved in the decision making process, but who will be affected by the outcome. Senior management jumps to mind on this. So does whomever owns the HRIS system. They may not be directly involved in selection, but they will get involved in the process.

So my list might look more like:

• Core Team
• Primary manager
• Future administrator
• Project manager
• Selection Team
• Core Team
• IT
• Procurement / Legal
  
• Business Unit Representatives
• Functional Area Representatives
• Learner and Line Manager Representatives
• Additional Future LMS administrators
• HR / OD
• Help Desk / Internal Support
• Stakeholders
• Senior Management
• HRIS owner
  

As I'm writing this, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to present it. Rather, I'm going to show it and then discuss things that often go wrong:

• Politics
• Communications
• Process
• Not involving IT
• Missing stakeholders

So, I'm thinking my presentation so far is:

• Process - flash it up, but won't spend time
  
• Selection team - flash it up, but won't spend timeI
• Issues - will spend time here
  

Hopefully this pattern can continue during the presentation.

I'm curious if this seems like it would be helpful or boring. I'm still a bit torn.