When we became educators and learning professionals, most of us didn’t expect to become involved in systems. Learning Management Systems demand us to become savvy in cataloguing, user experience, design, testing and systems governance.
Alison Bickford, our Principal Consultant, has a breadth of experience implementing Learning Management Systems from learning and business perspectives. Alison has project managed LMS implementation into government, hospitals, and commercial organisations.
Alison’s experience helps ensure the language being used by IT and vendors is translated and understood. Even more importantly, her experience helps empower learning and education teams in understanding the options available to them.
Our Project Management Engagement Principles
- All meaning is contextual. We strive to understand business context so that we can meet your project objectives and work effectively with your team.
- All complex tasks are made up of simple tasks. We take a stepwise approach to each task so it can be achieved with clarity.
- Listen and ask questions before giving an opinion. We strive to minimise assumptions.
- An issue identified early need only be a question. We create an environment of honest conversation to enable issues to be raised early so that issues can be mitigated or contained.
- Test early, test often. The ‘devil’ is in the operationalisation of a system or process. We strive to test operations as soon as possible, which helps also to educate the project team.
- All project controls have a ‘sweet spot’ between ineffectual and arduous. Project controls done well provide efficiency, reduce risk and give team members the confidence to be successful. We consult with the project team to find the ‘sweet spot’ and then maintain the controls.
- Communicate with flexibility. We strive to get to know stakeholders, their project interests and preferred communication approach. We ensure communication is unambiguous and provides stakeholders with certainty.
- Change occurs one person at a time. We strive to ensure we communicate, educate and find advocates to model the change at every opportunity.
- Ensure vendors are clear about project expectations. Treat vendors with curtesy and generally vendors will reciprocate. Service Level Agreements provide vendors with clarity.
