Open Source Bridge - How Two Fools Made Themselves Indispensible From Their Basement Office

Chris Chiacchierini, Mason Bondi - Oregon College of Oriental Medicine

• 50 staff, 250 students
• university originally chose proprietary commercial cms for $15K
  • used for marketing site
  • only one of 5 people in the world using it
• attended open source conference and learned about open source cmses
  • "holy shit, we just got snowed"
  • chose Joomla! for ease of use
• didn't want to give up on open source cmses
  • went to library, asked if they'd be interested in putting up a site using oss cms
  • did this all under the radar, wanted to wait until it was too late to go back before anyone knew
• through this a lot of institutional knowledge is being built, and since people had freedom they were starting to get more creative
  • class materials being put online
  • financial information about student loans
• lots of people and departments were using the open source cms
• once it was opened up to the students, it really started to take off
• two parallel forces going
• got call while he was on vacation -- marketing site got hacked
  • could now go to executive council with security concerns and propose switching over to the open source cms
  • was getting hacked every couple of days
• executive council asked how much it would cost
  • couldn't believe cost would be $0
• 4-5 departments already using the open source CMS loved it
• what about the rest of the community?
  • every single office at the university has a stake
  • lots of departments only updated static information once a year
    • weren't interested in doing anything with the CMS, or are too busy
  • e.g. grades--wanted to put grades online
    • would be vastly more efficient than mailing, but hard to make people change
• a project management cycle that works
  • opportunity -> needs analysis -> cost benefit analysis (proof of concept) -> project plan proposal -> approval -> design, build test -> implementation & training -> review
  • most often the people with the money aren't the ones who have the technological know-how so there's a lot of politics involved
  • a lot of the project management cycle is done in stealth mode
  • technical people tend to want to take the ball and run with it and tell everyone to get out of the way, but this doesn't work without a sponsor
  • need to get a sponsor at the executive level
    • often best to get the person who has the power to pull the rug out from under you to be the sponsor--they get part of the credit
  • need to sell the idea to a sponsor in the opportunity phase
  • still selling hard in the needs analysis phase
    • can do some of this in stealth--pick people you like and trust to get a little bit of insight into what the needs are
  • after this, set up a needs analysis meeting to ask for feedback--make it clear this is the one chance people have to offer feedback
    • better than going office to office--gets everyone in the same room
    • people see what the impact is outside of their own department
    • also lets people gripe if they want to
  • in cost/benefit phase have to make sure the proof of concept is in place
    • can't only look at cost as cost of the software--also involved is implementation, training, cost of support, etc.
  • project plan proposal--where people who gave feedback see what will actually be implemented
    • even though it won't be exactly what each person wanted, they'll see the bigger picture
  • approval -- doesn't only mean budget, but once something's approved there's no turning back
    • if you're not sure you can follow through, stop before approval
    • after approval you HAVE to deliver
  • implementation & training
    • second tier thing they implemented was putting course materials online using moodle (course management software)
    • no way could get everyone involved and get all the instructors to get all their materials online
      • students weren't excited at first either, but once they used it they won't go back
    • had a goal of rolling out three classes per quarter as a pilot
      • chose instructors that taught enough classes that most of the students would be involved
      • none of the courses are exclusively online but there are pieces of the course you can only get online
    • followed faculty around for three weeks, constant contact, asked for feedback from both instructors and students
      • important to get everyone comfortable
    • what they wanted to happen started to happen--students didn't want to deal with printed materials anymore
      • students started talking to faculty members whose courses weren't online
    • building things out slowly builds inertia, but always keep the costs in mind
    • as far as timing goes, as long as you can keep showing progress, specific deadlines aren't that important
    • if possible getting isolated focused time with people is ideal for getting things ramped up
      • can avoid ongoing and future training, also gets people thinking more creatively
  • review
    • constant cycle
    • some formal review, some informal
    • important to make incremental changes so the solution continues to meet the needs
• before the cms project started, the IT guys were seen as a necessity
  • now people are looking at the IT department as something that can help with solutions
  • creating a lot of work for the department
• through a successful project you can gain "street cred"
  • create a working relationship with other departments