The Missionary Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wanted to understand what users of the Mission Office System (MOS) desired of the product. Some mission offices in the past employed as many as twelve missionaries to process all of the paper work and perform all of the necessary functions inherent in a mission office. An effective technology solution would free up most of these missionaries to go back to the regular missionary activities of proselyting.
The Church decided to provide a new system that could be distributed over a web browser, rather than an Access database. To gather user requirements for the new system, the BYU consulting team conducted 38 interviews of current and past mission office personnel. Their research spanned 16 missions, and encompassed documentation collected over the past 15 years of office systems built by dozens of missionaries. During this extensive research, system functions were identified, documented, and categorized. The LDS Church will use the documentation of user requests to help develop the on-line version of MOS.