portal deployment best practices | ibm portal excellence conference 2009

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IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2009 San Diego, California - October 12 – 15, 2009

© IBM Corporation

Session B05

Managing the Portal Deployment Best PracticesSpeaker(s): Michael Porter, Principal

IBM Portal Excellence Conference 2009 – Americas

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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


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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!


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Vision and Alignment

Meet with Leaders Figure out their business

needs Give them “Portal 101” Align portal to the business Prioritize the alignment

By audienceBy what it will do


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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


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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


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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.


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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


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Sample Governance: Strategic


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TrainingYou 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


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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


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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………………………..


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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


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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


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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


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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


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Development: Developer Types Visual Designer

Don’t spin wheels having other developers do this

Content DeveloperSimple programming like jsp’s and javascriptTemplatingConfiguration

Portlet DeveloperFront end, not as deep as the integration or application

developerMust be familiar with MVC for more complex portlets

Integration DeveloperCreates integration services to back endUsually the most experienced


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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


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Administration

Allocate Portal and System Admin timeThey help developers resolve issuesThey get the environments up and runningThey 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 AllocationLight for just the portalHeavier when creating custom apps surfaced on the portal

The more complex your project(s), the more important Administration


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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


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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………………


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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


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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


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Additional Information and Resources

WebSphere Portal – IBM Site http://www-3.ibm.com/software/genservers/portal/

WebSphere Portal Business Solutions Cataloghttp://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 Bloghttps://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/WebSpherePortal/


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Session ID: B05

Session: Managing the Portal Deployment Project: Best Practices

Presenter(s): Michael Porter

Please take a few minutes to fill out the session survey. Thank you


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