Lounge

Ballpark for  an LMS administrator (Blackboard/Sakai/Moodle/WebCT/Angel) is around 1 FTE for every 10,000 users. Now if that admin is also doing course building, training, etc. you'll want to go to 1/2 - 2. But it is highly variable depending on how the site is used, how hosted, etc. I know of 50,000 user corporate sites, doing compliance training with just a few courses, who run Moodle with 1/2 FTE or less.

The numbers above assume you have an IT dept. or running Moodle as SAAS - sometimes the Moodle admin has to setup and administer the servers also, and that can add more hours depending how it is done.

If you are doing custom development also, then you'll want to add an FTE for a programmer or several*, depending on how much you want to do (most users don't do any customization - similarly you can have programmers make Building Blocks for Blackboard, but most BB sites don't.)

Of course you can also contract with a Moodle Partner to do most of the things above for you, and still save much more than you would spend on a commercial LMS.

*Sometimes I've seen people try to combine programmer/SysAdmin/Support and save some $$- I don't usually recommend that as the skillsets and ideal personality types are pretty different.

How long is a piece of string?  There are several phases:

1. Installing Moodle into it's RAW form.
   Maybe less than an hour if ou kow what you are doing.  But then the real work starts.
2. There is a system configuration activity requied at the Manager level.
   Which user access options do you want? (Users to create their own logins?  Options for front page? Logo?) Which repositories enabled?
   Authentication?  Host internally/externally
   Lots of little decisions: which filters, can techers add teachers to courses etc.
   
   
3. Then there is the courses setup.
   First categories decisions ie the way users will navigate, teachers think etc - then course creations.
   
   Here you strike a big issue.  There is no bulk course creation utility in native Moodle.
   It is one of the oldest requests (This forum post is from 2005, and this tracker item is number 5 out of over 24,000 isues in the votes so maybe soon we will have it)
   This is he decision point: will you employ a system admin who can run scripts etc etc?  This needs 1) server access 2) skill
4. Related to this is user management.
   Moodle's built in user managment is weak.  Fine for small courses, but for a slightly bigger course . . .
   
   You can bulk create accounts via CSV.
   Users can manually create their own accounts.  (But if they do, no-one is told)  They can self enrol (but agan here is you have to notice they have arrived)
   
   Moodle 2 has system wide cohorts.  But you must manually create these, which is a slow process.  There is a tracker request for bulk creation, but it has languished.
   
   
5. Prior to this however is a decision about authentication.
   You can authenticate AND populate courses off a database.
   Bigger users will do this.
   Some Student management systems come with built in connections to Moodle.  Run a script each night to update courses.  Cool.
   
   
6. That's to the course level.
   You then need design and course creation expertiese and staff development.

Thats only one (partial) view and I've skipped over a lot.

You can contract people to do this.  A crude measure: 1-2 days per week technical person to support a school of 1000, with lots of things hanging off this like library access.  Not including staff development.  My guestimate

Think ahead: Nice Moodle server up and running, Well designed courses, supporting learning, and saving time for the teachers.
Great formative assessment, collaboration, saving time with marking.  Fun things . . .
The ROI should be good.