Best Practices to Deploy a Successful Portal Carol Penne – International Monetary Fund Zach Wahl...
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Transcript of Best Practices to Deploy a Successful Portal Carol Penne – International Monetary Fund Zach Wahl...
Best Practices to Deploy a Successful Portal
Carol Penne – International Monetary Fund
Zach Wahl – Project Performance Corporation
March 18, 2005
Portal Implementation Challenges
2
Agenda
Defining the Portal Challenge Case Study – The International Monetary Fund Top Project Risks Portal Best Practices
3
Unstructured Information Structured Information
InternalRepositories
ExternalRepositories
Groupware(Exchange,
Notes)
RDBMSData
Warehouse
EnterpriseApplications
News Feeds Internet Tools
Intranet Sites
Internet Sites
Shared File Servers
FormsPolicies ManualsGuidesDocuments NewslettersPress ReleasesPublications Tacit
Knowledge
The Portal Challenge
Portals aggregate a broad spectrum of content, applications, and services that are owned and managed by a variety of groups
Conflicting requirements are a given; coordination and consensus among these many owners/stakeholders is difficult
“Organic” portal development is common, but very detrimental Clear portal management processes, guidelines, and authority are imperative
Enterprise Information Portal (EIP)
4
The Knowledge Management Challenge
Volume of content
increases…
Unclassified content anddocuments
Systems & Applications
cannot keep pace…
DocumentDocument ManagementManagement
E-mailsE-mails
Internal andInternal andExternalExternal
Web SitesWeb Sites
Content andContent and Data FeedsData Feeds
DatabasesDatabases
Key InfrastructureSystems
• Today, 80% of business is conducted on unstructured information
Gartner Group
• 85% of all data stored is held in an unstructured format
Butler Group
• Unstructured data doubles every three months
Gartner Group
• 7 million web pages are added every day
Gartner Group
5
Who owns the Portal?
Multiple business units utilize the Portal Framework for collaboration, service delivery, and information sharing
In an Enterprise Portal deployment, no one single entity completely owns the Portal
There are several areas where it’s important to define ownership:• Who purchases portal related software, hardware, and services?
• Who is in charge of the technical infrastructure, support, and deployment?
• Who sets policies and procedures that govern the Enterprise Portal?
• Who funds the effort of Enterprise Portal (Framework vs. Application)? Balanced ownership among centralized portal office, IT, and
business units is critical Multi-tier governance requires clear identification of the scope
and role of each governing body
6
Why are we building the Portal?
Various project constituents may have different expectations and needs for what the portal can do or should do
Portal Projects often lack a clear message as to why they are proceeding?• Lack of Business Case.
• Lack of clear message of benefits.
• Incorrect “if you build it they will come” mentality. Danger of building without clear reason WHY
Case Study: The IMF
8
What is the IMF?
The International Monetary Fund is an 184-member country organization established to:• Promote international monetary cooperation, exchange
stability, and orderly exchange arrangements• Foster economic growth and high levels of employment• Provide temporary financial assistance to countries to
help ease balance of payments adjustment
9
What the IMF does
Economist staff assist member countries through:• Surveillance/monitoring - of economic and financial
developments, and the provision of policy advice• Loans - to provide temporary financing to countries with
balance of payments difficulties• Technical assistance - to build up human and institutional
capacity • Research - to improve the analytical quality of the Fund’s
work• Statistics - to lead the development and formulation of
sound statistical practices
10
IMF’s Information Management Challenge
Seybold Report: “Years of Investing in technology but not investing enough to manage information.”
Amount of internal and external information grows rapidly Internal information locked in systems that are not well
integrated or easily accessed New technologies are available (portals, content
management systems, taxonomy engines, entity extraction tools, XML)
Economist staff experience difficulties in• Finding trusted information• Using and repurposing information effectively• Sharing information easily with others
11
Why the IMF is Building a Portal
The IMF’s Medium-Term Information Technology Strategy called for an Enterprise Information Portal for Country Desk Economists to:• Provide a single point of access to internal and external
information• Enable better decision-making• Customize and personalize content to user or
departmental preferences• Facilitate online collaborative activities and information
sharing• Increase staff productivity
12
IMF’s Enterprise Information Portal for Desk Economists
Spring/Summer 2002 - a prototype of portal technology was developed and business requirements for a portal pilot were gathered
April 2003 - Phase I delivered the portal to “early adopters” with the goal of validating benefits and requirements for full implementation of portal technology
March 2004 - Phase II expanded the pilot to the Western Hemisphere Department to further define economist information requirements
March 2005 - Current status of portal
Top Five Portal Project Risks
14
Top Five Portal Project Risks
1. Lack of End User Communications
2. Competing Interests
3. Too Loose/Too Tight Governance
4. Lack of Mandate
5. Unclear Scope
Portal Best Practices
16
The Keys to Portal Management
Identify Project Objectives and Business Case• Clearly define the scope
• Set expectations upfront
• Sell constituents on why they need a portal Define Project Roles and Responsibilities
• Give people ownership within the project
• Set up domains of responsibility Create High-Level Policies and Procedures
• Development/Coding Guidelines
• Security Rules
• Global Settings Provide Communication and Education
• Give users the ability to learn about the portal
• Create two-way communications and prove it means something
17
Distribute Ownership
Although some decisions (e.g., application framework, infrastructure, overall design and architecture, single sign-on approach) should be made by a central body such as a Steering Committee or Portal Program Office….
Portals touch too many stakeholders and lines of business to centralize all decisions and development
Therefore, determine who owns:• Project implementation• Applications, tools, data, content, business processes, etc.• Hardware, software, networks, servers, etc.
Get buy-in from across the enterprise (upper management, IT stakeholders, business managers, end users)
Clarify who owns which policies; ensure they can enforce and audit compliance
Reassess ownership at key points:
Development Support & Maintenance
Production/Go-Live
18
Limit Your Scope: Deploy Iteratively
Consider a phased deployment strategy Pilot to learn and reduce risk
• Build organizational acceptance• Apply lessons learned to improve• Revise & optimize methodology & governance
Recognize portal evolution• Don’t try to do it all at once• Recognize short vs. long-term goals; use
governance policies to differentiate and prioritize between them
Reassess governance model at each stage of development• Gradually shift from centralized to more
decentralized• Reassign, distribute responsibilities over time
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
Stage 4
Stage 5
Low Moderate High
Change/Effort Required
Imp
act/
Ben
efit
s
Low
Mod
erat
eH
igh
Thank you!
Carol Penne
Zach Wahl
This presentation should not be reported as representing the views of the IMF. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IMF or IMF policy.