Product guides
Questions to take into school management, ERP, and SIS
Questions school leaders should take into software discussions, covering workflows, definitions, ownership, permissions, evidence, and release boundaries.
Take the right questions into the room
A good software conversation starts with the work, not the product vocabulary. Ask which school workflow is being improved, what outcome will be tested, which record is authoritative, and what happens when the record is incomplete or wrong.
Take one shared workflow, decision record, data definition, or test set into the discussion. It should show what is agreed, what is uncertain, who owns the next action, and when it will be revisited. A student journey is often useful because it exposes admissions, administration, academics, finance, and family handoffs.
Ask for definitions that survive departments
Define words such as submitted, approved, published, active, withdrawn, paid, reconciled, and archived. Put the definitions beside the workflow and the support guidance. If a word changes meaning between teams, record the distinction rather than forcing a false shared definition.
When teams disagree, trace the word to the decision it supports. “Active,” for example, may mean currently enrolled for academics, financially liable, or permitted to access a portal. One label may need several explicit states so that a report does not silently combine different populations.
- One definition and owner for each source value
- One approval or publishing rule where needed
- One correction route for ordinary exceptions
- One escalation route for sensitive or urgent cases
- One date for reviewing the definition
Make meetings decision-led
Send the question and evidence before the meeting. Invite the owner who can decide or correct the work. Close with a decision, an unresolved risk, a named action, and a review date. This is more useful than asking each team for a general update.
Keep privacy, security, data quality, and academic-calendar constraints visible. GOV.UK procurement guidance recommends involving the data protection officer early when procuring educational technology; similar early involvement prevents late surprises in implementation.
Align releases with evidence
A configuration or content change should state the affected workflow, permission, test, owner, effective date, and hold rule. If the evidence is incomplete, narrow the release. Alignment is not agreement that everything is ready; it is shared understanding of what is ready and what is not.
