Michael de Raadt

When I started as a leader responsible for Educational Technology projects in a school, I lacked a framework to work within. Having come from the software development world, I understood how to develop systems, however, selecting and implementing systems is quite different.

I looked into a few frameworks for system change management and found PMBOK (the Project Management Body of Knowledge) was adaptable to EdTech projects in schools. PMBOK is a general project framework, but it is adaptable, so I set about writing a process guide and template based on it and also included a number of software and educational models to give specific relevance to schools.

In 2018 I ran a workshop at the AIS ICT Leadership conference to share my version of this process and it was well received. In summary, the process involves a number of work areas for planning, execution and change control as shown in the following diagram.

When working with a project team, a template can be used as the basis of a collaborative document to work through the planning work areas.

The most involved area is the Procurement area, which involves consultation to determine requirements, transforming these into prioritised criteria then setting a cut-off for essential criteria.

The documents below describe the process in detail including a comprehensive guide, a project plan template and the slides from my workshop (with examples of a software and hardware project in a school).

• Project process guide (PDF, updated 20200605)
• Project plan template (make a copy link)
• Workshop slides (PDF)

I’ve since heard back from other schools who have applied the process successfully.

I’m sharing it here now so that I can refer back to this process as I describe an LMS transition project we have undertaken over the last two years in subsequent posts.