Home-Grown, Open-Source or Commercial Learning Technologies: Part 1

Introduction

The decision to implement home-grown, open-source or commercial learning technologies can be very difficult for many organizations. Whether the technology is limited in scope (learning management, content management, talent management, remote/virtual learning delivery, etc.) or intended to be “all-inclusive”, there are a number of factors to consider. In this series of newsletter installments, we will review the build, open-source and commercial procurement pros and cons as they relate to learning technologies. ?

Home-Grown Learning Technologies

Many organizations, large and small, have built their own learning technologies. A great number of these systems are started but never fielded due to unanticipated requirements and expense. The lifecycle of the home-grown systems that do reach production is frequently less than 36 months. Looking under the covers of these systems, you may find that they are actually a hodgepodge of open-source and low-cost commercial technologies that have been cobbled together to meet a set of loosely defined minimum organization requirements. Most of these initiatives have severe cost overruns and implementation schedule delays. A major issue with these solutions is that they leverage the expertise of a very limited number of personnel in both their conception and development. Whether implemented via the cloud or in the organization’s data center, most of these solutions have security vulnerabilities that can easily present a doorway for hackers to gain access to other vital systems. While there are exceptions, most of these solutions eventually fail for the following reasons:

Expense – While normally initiated as a cost-saving measure, it is extremely rare for these projects to produce a supportable technology that costs less than a commercial solution.

Missing features – Home-grown systems tend to constantly evolve in order to support requirements not included in the initial design. Organization’s often find they must procure or leverage commercial software (Zoom, Success Factors, MS Teams, etc.) to achieve satisfactory capabilities and results. These add-ons can also be very expensive to integrate with a home-grown solution.

Technology evolution – All technologies have to evolve with standards that are well beyond the control of any organization developing their own internal applications. While you may be temporarily able to restrict the implementation of items like browsers/versions, authentication methodologies, network security and connecting devices; the tide will come in and your home-grown solution will need a major overhaul.

Change management – Most internally developed learning technologies are poorly documented. This creates a severe issue for implementing updates and revisions. It also may make feature enhancements impossible or so expensive than they cannot be achieved.

Reliance on one or two key personnel – Unless you have enforceable lockup agreements with the personnel that designed and created a home-grown system, you may find that all it takes is for one or two people to find employment elsewhere to cause your entire investment to be wasted.

Scalability – Home-grown systems almost always have a “weakest link”; a supporting technology or a bottleneck in their design that works great at first and degrades rapidly with expanded users and/or large datasets.

Support – A technology that is required to support thousands of users will require personnel assigned to provide responsive support. The initial design and development can be flawless at the moment of inception and still require extensive user support to meet an organization’s requirements. This support requirement will increase over time as unanticipated end-user technologies evolve. It will also increase as unanticipated features are added.

Defining Requirements

The most important issue that must be addressed before deciding to build a “home-grown” learning technology is the definition of the end-solutions capabilities. ?Creation of a detailed requirements document should always include all stakeholders. Any reasonable engineering design process will include both high-level and detailed requirements documentation prior to development of a schedule and budget. You may quickly find that the cost of developing your home-grown system will vastly exceed the cost of a commercially available technology that meets the organization’s requirements. Click the image below for an example.

Establishing a Technology Baseline

It is inevitable that any home-grown learning technology will require the secure integration with other internal systems (HRIS, Payroll, SSO, etc.) to enable the new technology to function. ?It does not make a lot of sense to create new Linux or Oracle based learning technologies if your organization is Microsoft based or vice-versa. Any good learning technology system will require network, web-server, and data system technologies in order to function. It is highly unlikely that any-size organization could produce a cost–effective and maintainable learning technology solution if required to expend labor resources to adequately integrate, support and maintain technologies that do not leverage the organization’s core systems.

Coming soon

In the next installment of this newsletter series, we will review the pros and cons associated with “open-source” learning technologies. While many of the advantages and disadvantages of open-source solutions are similar to the development of “home-grown” solutions (i.e. scalability, support, technology evolution), there are a number of considerations that are unique; including the advantage of the expanded vision of the communities of developers fielding these systems (i.e. Moodle, BigBlueButton). ??

About This Newsletter

Tips, Tools and Techniques provides research, new methods and collaborative events for developers, managers and instructors. Topics are selected based on market trends, industry events and subscriber recommendations. Subscribers can also participate in our monthly online events and share their success stories. Click here to subscribe.

About KMSI

KMSI provides learning, talent and performance management software solutions, Internet application hosting and professional services. Our service teams are managed by industry leaders implementing proven processes designed to be leveraged across practices. KMSI has designed performance improvement strategies for many of the largest organizations in the world. KMSI provides training development, instructional content conversion and other specialty and implementation services. Visit www.kmsi.com to learn more.