Portal Content Program

 

Purpose

 

The purpose of this deliverable is to refine the project scoping document and the company’s portal strategy. The deliverable should define the planned portal content from a high-level viewpoint (rough concept) and the required minimum content scope for going live.

The delivery should name the basic content types that are in the scope of the planned portal implementation and the respective business scenarios:

 

·         Business process-related content (for example, generic employee self services, business processes proposed by specialists in specific departments)

·         Corporate information content and services (for example, non-business-critical content, unidirectional information distribution and services, mostly addressed to the entire portal community – “intranet content”)

·         Knowledge management-related content (for example, collaborative document processing and document retrieval)

·         Collaborative applications (for example, synchronous and asynchronous communication and virtual team work areas)

 

When defining the desired content, a phased implementation approach should be considered (instead of a “big bang” approach) . One option might be to go live with limited content scope and then enhance the portal content in a step-by-step manner later on. This process could be defined in content implementation phases.

 

Finally, the portal’s content program could be the starting point for the specification of detailed content requirements in the blueprint phase.

 

How should it be produced?

 

This deliverable is produced primarily by content scoping workshops. A good starting point for identifying the high-level portal content implementation phases might be the portal strategy of the company and the project scoping document. There might be one or a more of the following basic strategies in place. The  identification process for content requirements might differ depending on these strategies:

 

·         Focus first on specific use cases that promise significant benefits (vertical content rollout)

·         Focus first on specific user groups and their tasks, and on establishing their working environment in the portal (implementation of specific roles)

·         Focus first on a large amount of users (for example, all employees) and offer only generic information such as “intranet” content (horizontal rollout)

·         A mixture of these strategies

 

When defining the content for the first content implementation phases, it might also make sense to target quick wins in terms of the portal’s attractiveness to the users and decision makers.

 

It is important to mention that establishing core business processes might also lead to knowledge management and collaborative requirements (for example, the need to access a contract document in a repository). On the other hand, there might be a significant number of knowledge management and collaborative functions that cannot be derived from core business processes due to the absence of a direct relationship to a specific process or process scenario.

It might therefore make sense to approach the KM/Collaboration issue independently from core business processes.

 

What if this is not done?

 

A portal solution will be produced that does not meet the customer’s requirements and the user’s expectations. Detailed content specification workshops might be difficult and time-consuming, because a common accepted starting point will not be in place.

This deliverable is also a precondition for detailed project planning.

 

  

Source of Input (Deliverable/Other)

Input

Enterprise Strategic Framework 

Portal Strategy and Program

Project Charter

Project Scope Definition

 

Outputs

 

Refer to the breakdown of the deliverable in the roadmap structure.

 

Additional Information

 

Substantial scoping is typical for portal projects because of the platform character of the portal. Compared to functional applications (such as CRM and SRM) the potential usage spectrum of a portal platform is less easily defined.

 

The delivery could be obsolete if a detailed portal strategy and scoping document has already been created (for example, during the discovery and evaluation phase).