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Defining and Managing Roles Critical to Project Success

Ensuring that the project succeeds within the school district requires that both the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Director of IT take leadership roles and provide guidance on the piloting, program management and project lifecycle management of the D2L system implementation. Both the CIO and Director of IT form a vital catalyst from a change management perspective as well, as entire organizations will more readily adopt to change when they see their leaders supporting a new strategic initiative or program (Sommerville, Craig, Hendry, 2010). The entire school district will see the D2L learning management system as worth investing their time and effort to learn and make successful with the CIO and Director of IT first endorsing the program and showing support. This also puts significant political support behind the D2L learning management system implementation as well, and that alone will solve many potential roadblocks to its success. The most critical element of success for any IT implementation is the support of the senior management team, and their combined efforts to reduce resistance to change through effective, clear communication that highlights the benefits of a new system or plan initiative (Peterson, 2010). The project leader must work closely with these two members of the school district's senior management team to ensure there is absolute support and continual reinforcement of the need for the D2L learning management system district-wide. The most effective project managers regularly meet with and gain support for their senior management team in explaining and illustrating the benefits of the new systems and programs being deployed (Anantatmula, 2010).

The implementation team also needs to include representatives from accounting, finance, the superintendent of the district, their staff, principals, learning program directors, the IT staff and teachers. All of these roles within the district have a vital role in the implementation of the D2L learning management system as each will be responsible for an aspect of the change management program, technology implementation, training, and daily value the system delivers in the form of specialized training. In addition to these team members throughout the district, the project leader must also coordinate each phase of the project plan with the professional services team from D2L, their configuration specialists, and the training specialists too. Each of these group['s input into