LMS Team Size and Time - Wow 23 Months!

Steve Wexler from the eLearningGuild's research group just helped me get into some interesting data around Team Size and Time during an Learning Management System Selection and Implementation process.

So, this post will end off the series of posts I was doing on LMS Selection as a precursor to my DevLearn presentation. The other related posts are:

• LMS RFP
• LMS Selection Presentation Reformulated
  
• LMS Selection Team and Stakeholders
• LMS Selection Process
• LMS Satisfaction Features and Barriers

Other posts on LMS:

• Learning Management Systems (LMS) Gotchas
• Tracking Without an LMS
• LMS Dissatisfaction on the Rise
• Do You WANT an LMS? Does a Learner WANT an LMS?
• Moving from One to Many - LMS Products are Two Generations Behind
• Leading with an LMS - Harmful to Your Health (or Skipping Stages ...
• Tools for On-Demand Information - An LMS?
• Point Solutions vs. Suites and Composition

Shoot - I don't have one specifically on the concept of a Starter LMS. I need one of those. Note to self.

This post focuses on what your Team will look like and how long it may take you. First of all, the survey of guild members broken the LMS Selection Team a bit different than I do. And I believe they were asking on core team only. Second, the LMS Selection Process in their report ended up being considerably different than mine. In particular, they asked about six steps:

1. Gather and Specify Requirements
2. Research Vendors Requirements
3. Meet with Vendors
4. Install and Configure
5. Customize
6. Implement

Steve is working on combining Steps 1-3 and Steps 4-6. Still even with that you really would want to know things like:

• What's the difference in time if you customize or don't customize?
• What's the timeline with Large Enterprise LMS implementations vs. smaller implementations? Or based on particular vendors?
  
• For people who considered this particular feature set important, how long did it take?
  

Still the scatter plots that show Team Size and Time Taken for each step is interesting and informative. I chose to limit my graphs to Companies with 2,000 or more employees having more than 1,000 learners involved in the implementation. Here's what I saw:

Note: larger circles indicate more answers.

There are some notes scattered below. Overall, it appears that it roughly takes:

3.5 people about 23 months to get things implemented. Wow, 23 months! By then, you are likely wrong about your requirements and the system you selected. Maybe you should have gone with a Starter LMS.

1 - Gather and Specify Requirements

Median - 3 people, 5 months

2 - Research Vendors Requirements

Median - 3.5 people, 4 months

3 - Meet with Vendors

Median - 3.5 people, 2 months

Note: people aren't spending enough time during evaluation doing hands-on evaluation. I have not idea how this can be shorter than researching vendors.

4 - Install and Configure

Median - 3.5 people, 4 months

5 - Customize

Median - 3.75 people, 4 months
Note - there should have been more 0,0 values. Isn't it time for us to stop customizing?

6 - Implement

Median - 3 people, 4 months