Build Your Own

In order to devise your own content re-use system, you need to have some specific areas of expertise available:

• Database Architect (DBA) - The DBA creates a data library that exactly matches your DTD. These data tables are optimized to perform the most common search routines. The engineer should be experienced with hardware and network configurations appropriate to your organization's needs.

• Interface Designer (DID) - The DID is going to organize your query engine and make sure that all the routines operate properly to input and output data to your authoring and delivery environments.

• Configuration Engineer (CM) - The CM configures and maintains the version control repository. This should be an expert in the software you have selected (ClearCase, Perforce, etc.,...). Many DBA's think they can do this job, but very few can. Configuration engineering is very important to making the whole system reliable and expandable.

• Template Designer - You will need one of these for FrameMaker and another one for Dreamweaver, if you use these products. Many organizations contract this task, an acceptable alternative, as many excellent consultants exist in this field.

• LMS/Server Engineer - This is an expertise that is generally provided (for a fee) by the software vendor that supplies the LMS or server platform. As noted before, Adobe has a wide range of services in supporting and training for their enterprise server products.

You only get the full vale of your analysis and planning if you carry out the results of that research by developing your own solution. Any other approach compromises your results. You also build a core competency in developing and delivering learning objects.

The principle requirement for success for such a venture is buy-in from top management. There must be a commitment and a requirement to achieve a workable system in a modest time frame for a realizable cost. Successfully completing such a system results in the biggest gains in productivity and largest reduction in cost per training hour. Any organization (of more than 10 training content designers) that has a sincere commitment to providing quality training programs, especially one that aims to increase the percentage of eLearning in its training offerings, should consider creating its own system.

Some of the main advantages and risks of developing your own content reuse system:

Advantage	Risk
What you design is what you get. It is not necessary to wage an endless battle with a vendor over features or functionality.	You are not purchasing a proven solution. Although the technology is sound, your implementation may fail.
The system that results will be more extensible and flexible. As the needs of your organization grow and change, your system will accommodate these changes better.	Unless you exercise restraint, your system may outgrow your needs and become a monster that consumes more resources than it returns.
Your system is entirely within your control. Because you own all the source, you are not at the mercy of a third party.	Your organization needs to be able to provide the development infrastructure to produce a satisfactory system and then maintain it enterprise-wide for many years.
Once the system is in place and in use, it is less expensive to maintain (unless you change it).	You can budget expenses better with an outside contract than with an internal development project.
You build a great deal of specialized competency in your designers and production staff	Replacing that expertise can be very difficult to do.
Designers and developers work together, keeping one another current in skills and development within the XML world	Designers and developers spend a lot of time integrating new software version updates and other less-productive tasks.
Because your system is driven entirely by your own needs, you don't need to put up with evolutionary changes created for someone else's benefit, but with you must train your people to use it.	When resources are scarce, you may find your development efforts are cut back precisely when you need more support.