Portal Deployment Best Practices | IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2009
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The document outlines best practices for managing the deployment of a portal, emphasizing the importance of aligning the portal with business goals and user needs. It covers key aspects including governance, project management, user experience, development, and testing, highlighting the significance of a collaborative approach and continuous review. Successful deployment also requires thorough preparation, training, and post-launch maintenance to ensure ongoing support and user satisfaction.
Portal Deployment Best Practices | IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2009
- 1. Session B05 Managing the Portal Deployment Best Practices Speaker(s): Michael Porter, Principal
- 2. Agenda Aspects of a successful portal deployment Holistic approach to portal Vision and Alignment Governance Training Methodology PM Best Practices Installation and Config Development Testing Deployment
- 3. Aspects of a Successful Deployment Does it meet the end user’s goals? Is it well used? Can you prove that you saved money? Can you prove that you increased revenue? Does your company or organization view it as a success? The Portal is a tool that gets you to the end goal. It’s the end result that matters!
- 4. Vision and Alignment Meet with Leaders Figure out their business needs Give them “Portal 101” Align portal to the business Prioritize the alignment By audience By what it will do
- 5. Sample Vision Customers Prospects New Customers Existing Customers Partners Suppliers Employees The portal will drive sales Web Channel for SMB (sales, care, service) The portal will decrease costs through automation and access to information Customer, Partner, Employee The portal will improve and automate premium services Company A service differentiation Improved services to help encourage adoption of self service for elite customer The place for customers and partners to conveniently interact with Company A . Not the only place Will provide a positive customer & partner experience Constituents Strategies
- 6. Follow Through: Complete the Alignment Interactive workshops with the client Engages Line of Business and IT Mgmt. Identifies value in the context of the client’s business challenges Provides a high-level plan on where to begin and what can be delivered over a period of time. Define Priorities and Dependencies Three questions: Complexity Business Value Organizational Readiness Define the dependencies Project, Organization, Technology Create a roadmap
- 7. Sample Roadmap and Dependencies Timeline takes into consideration the client priorities, complexities, and critical Dependencies Roadmap is a living document that is continually reviewed and updated.
- 8. Governance Organizations must understand the roles they fill Key standards need to be set Projects should not start from scratch Give them lines of communication A Foundation of standards and tools A knowledge store A place to interact with the project Give business and IT a way to interact Levels of Governance Strategic Tactical Operational Business Administration
- 10. Training You cannot just give them a tool and let them go Groups to train Administrators Application Developers Content Developers Leadership Business Users Type of training IBM’s Portal Curriculum Portal 101 End User Content and Portal Admin Mentoring
- 11. Methodology Portal is a loosely coupled, highly scalable technology Portal has many different pieces and parts It works best with iterations and “baby steps” It works best with frequent reviews and re-prioritizations Consider any iterative type methodology RUP UML SCRUM XP Crystal
- 12. Project Management: How to Fail How to fail when managing a portal project My job definition is to get a report and summarize it in another report My job is to make a list of all the risks and put them on a piece of paper My job is to make a list of issues and put them on a piece of paper My job is to hold a weekly meeting and present my pieces of paper My job is to have a developer tell me of an issue on Thursday and assign someone to address it when I create my status report on Monday I’m a Project Manager, it’s the process rather than the end goal or the technology that’s important. Aside from some spiffy PM tools and a cool certificate on the wall, a good admin could do my job………………………..
- 13. Project Management Different Philosophy A good project manager is worth his or her weight in gold: pay accordingly A good project manager Sits with architects and developers over lunch Understands the technology well enough to understand the dependencies Can you create a page on the portal? Can you set security? Can you place portlets? Do you know the general approach to integration? Do you know the general approach to content management? Acts immediately on issues with dependencies Is forward looking and ensures deliverables and key technology is ready before developers start working on them. Can translate a developer issue to a business language Isn’t afraid to act like a Business Analyst if the need is there Uses the collaboration tools, project spaces, etc. to their best advantage
- 14. Project Management Tools Team Space Use it religiously Give it some structure IT and Business need access Consider newer collab tools that are more agile Project Work Plan Update it Use it to get in front of issues Risks and Issues Jira, spreadsheets, part of team space Great tools but only to give the PM something to do Reports Important but only as part of the end result A PM Cannot spend all of his or her time creating reports. Remember: the tools are only used to get you to the end result
- 15. User Experience Objective testing to make sure your UI works Consider Visualization IBM’s Portal Experience Modeler iRise Let users see the solution early Capture requirements in that context User experience type testing can user iterations like portal development Make it part of the project and not some separate activity that has nothing to do with the project More easily cut from the project (not a good thing if you are focused on the end result and not just launching a portal) More expensive Worse results Embed UX in your process. Involve the users early and often
- 16. Development: Foundation and Standards Follow the Enterprise Standards If they don’t exist, then set them Development tools Eclipse RAD Portlet Factory MVC (Struts, JSF, Spring) Simple portlets don’t need an MVC Other standards and scenarios Caching DB access UI standards (based on those User Experience best practices) Bottom line is that developers are more productive when you’ve defined the tool set and use them on multiple projects
- 17. Development: Developer Types Visual Designer Don’t spin wheels having other developers do this Content Developer Simple programming like jsp’s and javascript Templating Configuration Portlet Developer Front end, not as deep as the integration or application developer Must be familiar with MVC for more complex portlets Integration Developer Creates integration services to back end Usually the most experienced
- 18. Development: Estimation Rule of Thumb: Take whatever the architect or developer gave you and double it. If you use the really good ones to estimate, they forget they are probably 50-75% more efficient than your average developer Use a ranking system: Low, Medium, High Nothing EVER takes less than 4 hours After you get the development estimate, then add in everything around it Requirements Design (if developer didn’t take that into account) All kinds of testing (more on that later) Deployment and launch Time to migrate or create the content
- 19. Administration Allocate Portal and System Admin time They help developers resolve issues They get the environments up and running They prep for post launch monitoring Do not forget Release Management If not setup correctly, this leads to disaster and a lot of wasted time DBA Allocation Light for just the portal Heavier when creating custom apps surfaced on the portal The more complex your project(s), the more important Administration
- 20. Testing Good architecture the first step in the process Define load and critical applications If Prod is clustered then Test must be clustered Don’t cut the testing because you are behind Involve QA team early Types of Testing Unit: Developers must do it System: How does everything work together User Acceptance: important but it better not be the first time users see it Load or Stress: extremely important. Do baseline and then keep doing it. Hit it hard Hit it over an extended period Hit it with different users Use multiple scenarios Content, application, search, login, etc A portal has many moving parts. One part cannot take down the portal
- 21. Deployment Portal Installation All environments setup and running Portal Themes and Skins Portal Configuration Portlets Content Templates Migrate the actual content Rules Workflow Database Setup tables and base data Services layer ESB, EAI, App Servers Connectors Search Servers LDAP Servers Setup users Setup security Identity and Authorization Management TIM/TAM, OIM/OAM, Siteminder Legacy Systems Code changes Config changes Again, Portal has many moving parts, deploying means you have to prep all those parts………………
- 22. Deployment Identify all the systems that need to be launched or that have modifications Identify all the people in charge of it Identify who’s on site and who’s on call Important: Do whatever you can before launch Migrate themes and skins Run database scripts and setup db’s Create rules for workflow engines Etc Setup back out procedures If the worst happens, can I return to my previous product ready state? 6 weeks before launch, start weekly planning meetings Remember that a PM’s job is to get in front of it. DBA’s, Sys Admins, Architects, and developers will let it slide if you do. Push them more than once a week in a meeting
- 23. Post Launch Success Setup a help desk Train them on identifying the issue “ The portal is down” is the most common error but usually it’s not the portal but some back end system Setup monitoring Server System Process The actual portal itself Allocate time for your developers to be a level of support until help desk and other support processes are in place Create a feedback portlet and act on feedback Make it part of the governance process Once a portal is launched, you have to maintain it
- 24. Additional Information and Resources WebSphere Portal – IBM Site http://www-3.ibm.com/software/genservers/portal/ WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Catalog http://catalog.lotus.com/wps/portal/portal Websphere Portal Developer’s Zone http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/websphere/zones/portal/ Product Documentation and WebSphere Portal Wiki http://www-3.ibm.com/software/genservers/portal/library/ http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/portalwiki.nsf Education http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/training/portalofferings.html WebSphere Portal Blog https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/WebSpherePortal/
- 25. Please take a few minutes to fill out the session survey. Thank you Session ID: B05 Session: Managing the Portal Deployment Project: Best Practices Presenter(s): Michael Porter
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