Best Practices to Deploy a Successful Portal Carol Penne – International Monetary Fund Zach Wahl – Project Performance Corporation March 18, 2005 Portal.

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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

[email protected]

Zach Wahl

[email protected]

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.