ChMS Selection Process Part 3 - Developing a Selection Process

A successful ChMS selection and implementation process is rarely an individual effort. It takes an engaged and equipped (and trusted) team, with a clear leader.

1. Recognize the need for a new ChMS (sort of implied if you're reading this series)
2. Designate a project leader. Big projects like this live and die on leadership. Someone needs to be in charge. Someone needs to be the final decision maker. Even if ultimately “the pastoral staff” is going to make the call on which database to choose, the person who is the leader on the project is going to have to work through this process and make a final recommendation to the pastoral staff. The stronger the leader, the better. There will always be differences in opinion. Just because the children’s minister saw X database in person at Y church and thinks it’s the greatest thing in the history of the universe does not mean this is the right database for your church, and it certainly does not qualify the children’s minster to be able to know everything about the churches data needs…
3. Detail the failings of the current methods in use (data silos, inaccurate data, missing functionality etc.)
4. Make case to senior staff to engage this process
   1. Getting senior staff support is essential to the success of a ChMS conversion. The mandate to use the new product, and only the new product, needs to come from senior staff, not from IT or from whatever department has been put in charge of the actual selection and implementation of the new database. Do not underestimate the importance of this step
5. Begin by detailing what you utilize your current database for, if you have one. This is the baseline functionality you MUST replicate with a new system, or it will fail. For example, If you take attendance every week on a piece of paper, and enter that attendance in the system and the new system cannot handle this quickly and easily, the entire implementation will fall apart on this one simple task unless you have fully thought through how you are going to replace this day one with the new system
   1. What do people rely on from the data? Not what do they do (e.g. they enter attendance every week. That is something they do. WHY do they do it?)
   2. In many cases people are using very dysfunctional methods to accomplish a business purpose. Their natural expectation will be to replicate these dysfunctional methods in the new system. This is why you need to dig to the core of what is actually being accomplished, and then look at what the best way to do this would be in the systems you evaluate. Not looking to replicate the method, but rather the outcome
6. What are the business functions you are hoping to achieve with the new database. Not features, but business goals. Putting a picture in the database is not a business goal. Utilizing photos to provide the ability for staff to quickly and easily put a name with a face when making a phone call, or deciding on suitability for ministry is a business goal
7. Identify the key decision makers that need to be involved in the database selection process. This is not everyone who will be using the database. Not every secretary, but perhaps one heavy DB user and the office manager. You want someone who uses it day to day to help you evaluate the new solutions, and someone who is able to enforce the decision once its made. Thus for check-in you might have the children’s pastor and someone who directly oversees check-in week in and week out
8. Ask staff in general for a list of things they wish the database could do. This “second tier” of requests is helpful, but not essential. They may not realize that they want a database to do many things they do, so asking questions like “What are you using excel for currently” or “Do you maintain an online, access or filemaker database of our people? What do you use that data for” will get you better answers than just asking for a wish list. Evaluate these requests for feasibility and inclusion in your requirements
9. At this point the project leader should combine all of the various requirements and begin asking the type of questions that will be addressed ahead in this series

Thanks to Joel Lingenfelter for substantially ALL the content of this post.

Next: Part 4 -Some non-Technical Questions

Previous: Part 2 - Focus on Staff