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Portal management is a key to delivering an effective portal. Studies have repeatedly demonstrated that if users are dissatisfied with their portal experiences, they do not consider using the portal again. By its nature, the portal brings together multiple organizational teams with potentially conflicting interests. These teams need to work together on a range of issues including user interface (UI) branding, content, personalization, layout and operational issues. The effectiveness of the portal often depends on strong governance structures both to resolve the short-term coordination issues and to move forward the long-term portal vision.
Therefore, the need for the definitions of effective portal governance strategies has often been articulated by IBM® WebSphere® Portal customers. This article covers both the organizational and technology dimensions of effective governance. It addresses portal governance strategies in a number of different ways including portal concentration areas, phases of the portal life cycle, portal velocity, and goals of the portal. It drills down into typical portal roles and their interactions across various representative portal scenarios.
To derive the most benefit from this article, you should have a basic understanding of the concepts and use of WebSphere Portal, and preferably some real-life experience on how the portal affects various constituencies within the organization.
This article could be interesting to anyone working with portal management, particularly the administrative and organizational aspects of the portal.
Portal governance: An overview
Governance engages people and processes to help build more effective systems. It can be thought of as the identification of which constituents are responsible for what functions, the processes to accomplish those functions, the metrics used to measure the effectiveness of those processes, and a feedback mechanism for continuous optimization.
Governance is particularly important to maintain ongoing user satisfaction with the portal to have users return to the portal. Governance is a particular challenge with portals because of the large number of components in a typical portal architecture, the range of the constituents affected by the portal, and the many processes used to keep the portal up and running. Often, building and releasing the portal is only the initial step; portal governance is needed to keep the portal effective for the full return on the investment (ROI) in it. Figure 1 illustrates a typical portal scenario with various portal constituencies including portal users, portal administrators, line-of-business representatives, content creators, UI designers, and developers working together to keep the portal running. Portal governance processes are the lubricant that facilitates these operations.
Portal governance is influenced by a number of factors:
- The nature of the portal. Is the portal internal facing or external facing?
- Organizational characteristics. Is the organization centralized or decentralizing?
- The life cycle of the portal. Is the portal under development, or is it a mature portal?
Figure 1. Portal components and processes
A frequent expectation of portal projects is that the project is fully successful after the portal is live. But this expectation does not often take into account that portals are continually evolving to meet dynamic business needs and to engage multiple constituents and processes. Another pitfall is that the project is viewed as a technical design and implementation for a single business function, without an understanding of the portal as a platform for deploying ongoing business solutions. Portal governance provides the framework for the portal to be effective on deployment. It is therefore integral to the operational success of the portal and attaining an effective ROI on the portal.
Table 1 illustrates some of the symptoms of poor governance.
Table 1. Sample effects of poor governance
| Affected area | Possible dysfunction without proper governance |
|---|---|
| Portal growth | Disorganized portal growth without centralized coordination as different groups take ownership of portal subcomponents to suit their own needs |
| Portal access | Vague user roles leading to poor content targeting and personalization; the risk of unauthorized access to content and functions |
| Portal content | Out-of-date portal content because content workflows are too slow; too much time needed to develop and deploy new applications, which can lead to significant time lags in meeting user needs |
| Portal usability | Confusing portal layout because:
|
| Portal collaboration | Piecemeal portal-based collaboration without a cohesive strategy |
After you determine how badly affected your portal is by poor governance you are in a position to address those factors and move forward. The nature of portal governance is influenced by several dynamics:
- Portal criticality. Often, the need for portal governance is directly proportional to the organizational visibility of the portal and to the perceived effect of the portal for marketplace success.
- Portal maturity. Portal governance evolves as the portal project transitions from the design, development, and quality assurance (QA) phases to full production.
- Portal IT assets. Portals often serve to consolidate the delivery of existing portals and IT applications. The delivery can vary from Web links to existing applications to full-fledged integrated solutions through service-oriented architecture. The complexity of the applications and IT silos delivered through the portal can drive the need for portal governance.
- Portal processes and roles. The level of organizational interactions and roles required to support content workflows and other processes on the portal can increase the need for governance.
Building the foundations for portal governance
Developing effective portal governance requires up-front preparation to identify the ongoing processes, portal objectives, and portal roles as they exist currently and will exist in the future. This preparation can consist of the steps and choices shown in figure 2.
Figure 2. Gathering data for the portal governance framework
Choosing the type of governance models
A key decision is choosing the level of autonomy for portal governance; portal governance can be centrally managed through a small core team or distributed across the various constituencies. Table 2 compares the governance approaches.
Table 2. Portal governance models
| Model | Description | Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Centralized |
|
|
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| Decentralized |
|
|
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| Hybrid combination |
|
|
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In practice, most forms of portal governance are based on a hybrid combination model, reflecting the reality that often in an organization some functions are centralized and other functions are decentralized. This reality requires development of effective portal governance policies and procedures that combine centralized and decentralized processes.
Building the strategic long-term objectives is an important part of communicating the mission of the portal to its constituents. A mission statement can be of value to align perceptions of the portal. Also, the portal objectives should be broken down into short-term, intermediate, and long-term objectives to permit full planning on the portal activities. As an example, consider the objectives for a portal for a health insurance company whose mission is to deliver information and services to consumers.
Table 3. Portal governance objectives: Sample consumer health care portal
| Strategic objectives | Intermediate-range objectives | Immediate objectives |
|---|---|---|
| Cut down on customer service costs by making the consumer health care portal the hub for self service interactions Make the consumer health portal a key competitive differentiator in the marketplace |
Leverage the portal as the hub for product announcements and promotions Consolidate application architectures to fit into the portal as self-service applications |
Enable business constituents to publish and edit content Facilitate a common look across the portal |
Documenting the portal processes
The governance process is a set of steps (both formal and informal) that engage defined actors to arrive at specific decisions. Portal governance processes deal with both the day-to-day decisions, such as approving portal UI changes, and strategic decisions, such as offering new applications through the portal. A key part of portal governance is defining the portal processes that can be spread across multiple constituencies. Table 4 describes some typical processes.
Table 4. Typical portal processes
| Process | Brief description |
|---|---|
| Prioritization and release strategy | Introducing and prioritizing the new services and capabilities for the portal |
| Site brand management and user experience | Measuring and improving the quality of the experience of the site, including the introduction of personalization, portal logos, styles, and colors |
| Portal operations | Portal IT management including downtime, backups, and patches |
| Portal development | Developing portal artifacts such as custom portlets and themes |
| Site taxonomy | Enhancing site map artifacts such as pages and navigation schemes |
| Content management | Defining creation, modification, and archival of content |
It is important that all business and technical teams understand the documented process and that the portal governance model incorporates auditing to ensure that the governance activities by different teams meet the documented process.
Defining portal governance roles
Portal governance roles are specific functions performed by the portal team constituents to arrive at decisions on the portal. The portal processes defined previously can be structured to identify a set of portal roles. Table 5 identifies some of the typical portal roles.
Table 5. Typical portal roles
| Portal roles | Focus areas |
|---|---|
| Portal center of excellence | Creating competencies for the portal and disseminating them across the organization |
| Portal project office | Tracking and coordinating activities around the portal impact areas |
| Portal project manager | Managing the day-to-day activities with the portal |
| Portal administrators | Configuring and administering the portal resources |
| System administrators | Managing the IT infrastructure supporting the portal |
| Content managers | Publishing content and managing the content |
| Branding specialists | Designing and developing the portal UI graphics, UI consistency, navigation, and branding |
| Developers | Developing, testing, and releasing portal components, such as custom portlets and themes |
Constructing the portal governance framework
After you build the portal governance foundation components, you should be ready to put in place the governance framework. The portal governance framework is developed to implement the company’s strategy for the portal by delivering an operating model for planning, communication, and coordination for the portal.
The key components of the governance framework are the governance steering committee, the governance processes, plus metrics that measure the effectiveness of the governance processes and approaches that adapt the governance processes for increased effectiveness.
An important consideration while you construct the portal governance framework is framing it in the context of the portal's current development stage. The portal, like other software projects, goes through these phases: envisioning, implementation, and operations. Each of these stages has different governance needs, as discussed in a later section of this article.
Figure 3 shows the major components of building the portal governance framework.
Figure 3. Building the portal governance framework
Formulating the portal governance steering committee
The portal steering committee acts as a communication link between the portal core team and the users; it provides a forum for the core team to communicate timelines for deliverables and expected functionality, thereby setting the expectations of the stakeholders. Moreover, the steering committee serves as a mechanism for educating the participating users about the potential benefits of the portal, helping to spawn discussion for future development activities and encouraging support from additional stakeholder groups.
A portal governance steering committee is typically composed of the following:
- Executive sponsor. A senior sponsor can provide executive oversight across multiple departments to address process and business change issues, assist in removing barriers to the portal project, align the portal with strategic objectives and initiatives, leverage enterprise-wide resources, and act as chief evangelist.
- Portal project manager. The project manager has overall project responsibility and guides and manages activities throughout the development, operations, and maintenance phases.
- Portal core team. The core team consists of key technical and management staff (such as managers and architects) who are responsible for execution and oversight of the portal activities including enforcing policies and procedures and reviewing and approving all new development and change requests for portal components.
- Line-of-business representatives. Selected business constituents who derive business value from the portal assist in planning, communicating, and coordinating the portal business initiatives.
By intermingling technology resources with business owners, the portal steering committee creates a forum for business owners to guide current and future portal development activities. It provides faster and more targeted results to these stakeholders and generates greater support for the portal project.
Defining the portal governance processes
A set of portal governance processes can be defined to manage the governance activities. The following is a broad outline that you can tailor to your specific circumstances:
- Policies and procedures.
Identify each of the portal governance components (such as content management, portal UI, and portal operations), and for each component define clear information concerning the responsible party, the means to request a modification or an addition, and any other needed operational processes and roles or responsibilities. The means for communicating this information can include process flow diagrams or standard operating procedures. Componentizing policies and procedures holds several benefits. For example, a document can serve as a road map, to identify all key portal components and create firm rules for their development and maintenance. Moreover, this document helps in a move to a decentralized portal model where the portal core team defines the development rules, users identify and request the new functionality, and individual business teams build the portal functionalities.
- Operational policies.
Focus on day-to-day operational interactions on the portal governance components and come up with specific operational strategies to manage key intersections points and potential conflict areas in portal governance. For example:
- You can coordinate strategies on how the content management teams work to build new content while the portal development team is upgrading the portal with new components.
- You can determine how the portal infrastructure plans are aligned to meet the needs of the line-of-business representatives for the next quarter.
- You can organize various portal constituent teams to work together to determine a common portal look.
- Communication.
Communicate about the portal to all users, potential users, and other stakeholders through a variety of means. For example, you can develop a public area to contain the portal policies and procedures, contact lists, bug reports, and new requests. Furthermore, the portal team can use the public area to discuss existing and planned development initiatives and timelines for the addition of planned functionality.
- Feedback.
Actively solicit user feedback in the form of bug reports or new functionality requests. Leverage general user surveys to fine-tune the governance processes.
Aligning governance to the portal life cycle
The nature of portal governance varies with the life cycle of the portal, based on whether the portal is in the envisioning, implementation, or operations phase:
- Portal envisioning
- Understand the current governance processes to construct the new governance model.
- The governance steering committee is focused on bringing together the stakeholders to adapt the existing processes to define the new governance processes.
- Portal implementation
- Manage the dynamic processes associated with the development and the release of the portal.
- The governance steering committee is focused on moving the various development and testing tasks forward.
- Portal operations
- Manage the day-to-day operational aspects of the portal.
- The governance steering committee is focused on communication and coordination among the portal constituent teams and portal stakeholder teams.
Measuring governance effectiveness
Governance is an ongoing process that should be monitored and optimized. The best way to monitor the portal governance model is to define a set of metrics. Table 6 lists some commonly used metrics for portal governance:
Table 6. Portal governance metrics
| Portal governance metrics | Notes |
|---|---|
| User problem reports | Frequency and severity of the user problem reports with the portal |
| User satisfaction surveys | Level of satisfaction with the portal in user surveys |
| User population | Number of registered and online users; and the rate of increase in the portal user population |
| Page and portlet hits | The number of page hits and portlet hits, which are particularly relevant if there is a portal personalization campaign |
| Commerce revenues | For e-commerce portals, the revenues derived from the portal and the rate of revenue growth |
| Content turnaround time | Time taken to approve and to publish new content on the portal |
| Development turnaround time | Time taken to develop new custom portlet components and to release them on the portal |
These metrics can be used to tune the effectiveness of the portal governance processes.
Governance with WebSphere Portal V6.0 and later
WebSphere Portal V6.0 gives you a number of capabilities to enable portal governance. You can use these capabilities to make governance easier and more effective.
WebSphere Portal includes virtual portals that enable a single WebSphere Portal server instance to service multiple user communities with separate portals, each with its own look, navigation, and page schemes.
The virtual portal administration is based on a distributed administration model with global administrators responsible for virtual portal setup and management of shared resources such as portlets and themes. Local administrators for each virtual portal manage specific aspects of the virtual portals, such as the page layout and navigation scheme for the portal.
Virtual portals help create a governance model with centralized management of the common shared resources in the base portal and autonomous management of the localized resources in the virtual portals. A virtual portal can be used as a tool to establish effective governance across different line-of-business groups to ensure that their needs can be met without collisions and to establish a federated model for resource management.
WebSphere Portal content management
WebSphere Portal content management offers a rich set of content publish and content approval capabilities that are closely integrated with the portal.
The content publishing capabilities include powerful content workflows where users can be assigned roles that allow them to publish content, edit content, and approve content.
The content management roles can be used to enforce an effective governance model through user assignments for specific tasks. This assignment helps ensure that there is a clear designation of responsibilities and a structure for content-based interactions across the teams.
Personalization rules enable the rewiring of portal behaviors by business users without requiring portal programming skills. These rules can range from displaying certain content based on specific criteria to hiding or displaying portlets based on business rules.
The abilities to create, edit, and manage personalization rules can be segregated across line-of-business units using page permissions that help build a portal governance strategy.
A key need for governance is communications among the constituent teams that share the portal. The WebSphere Portal collaboration suite offers a range of collaboration functions including team rooms to share governance documents and IBM Lotus® Sametime® for communication among the governance team’s constituents. Using these capabilities can enhance the effectiveness of your governance processes.
WebSphere Portal process integrator
The WebSphere Portal process integrator enables the development of human-centric workflows and forms to automate manual processes, providing tracking and visibility into the processes. Governance processes can benefit from this technology because it can automate some functions; for example, it can automate the approval process for portal changes.
WebSphere Portal federated administration
Federated portals are portals that encompass other portals, setting up a federation model as a hierarchy of portals. The federation model can also be an effective tool to set up the portal governance structure. Typically, there are separate owner teams for the portals being federated along with common shared centralized policies and resource management through the federated portal.
The governance processes can be structured through a portal steering committee composed of representatives from the portals being federated and representatives of the systems, such as content management and security, that provide centralized resource sharing across the portals.
Best practices for portal governance
Even though the approach to portal governance can be unique for every portal, the following are some best practices that are derived from real-life experiences:
- Formulate a portal governance committee. Formulating a portal governance committee is vital for effective governance so that you can coordinate and manage the activities concerning the portal, enhance communication among the portal constituent teams, and build plans for the portal. The portal governance committee (also referred to as the portal project office) should be composed of representatives from key portal constituencies with a regular meeting schedule and well-defined processes and means of communication.
- Obtain executive sponsorship. Often there are competing and colliding priorities for the portal that need to be resolved among the portal teams. The long-term goals of the portal need to be defined, and key organizational resources need to be procured for the portal. These considerations often require a senior executive with oversight over the relevant departments for effective portal governance.
- Establish a portal center of excellence. Effective portal governance requires building competencies on a range of technologies for the portal. It also involves developing documentation and training materials on the portal operational procedures and disseminating these materials to the various portal constituents. The portal center of excellence helps to coalesce and to drive these processes.
- Develop governance effectiveness metrics. The portal governance committee should formulate a set of quantifiable metrics to measure the effectiveness of portal governance and use those metrics as a feedback loop to refine the portal governance effectiveness. Some examples of metrics are these:
- Number and severity of portal problem reports
- Portal usage statistics
- Turnaround time to post new content
- Time to develop and release new portal artifacts
- Adapt portal governance. As described earlier, the nature of the portal governance can change as the portal project evolves from inception to production. Moreover, after the portal is in production, the portal mission and usage could evolve continually based on ongoing business needs. Therefore, portal governance is not static; to be effective, it too needs to evolve along with the changing nature of the portal.
This article discussed how to determine if you need portal governance and how to define and to implement portal governance. Setting up portal governance involves a systematic effort to do the following:
- Capture the current state of the portal, starting with capturing the portal's current processes and constituents
- Define the mission of the portal, plus its roles and processes
- Apply a set of best practices for optimizing the governance efficiencies
Portal governance is not static; it evolves with the life cycle of the portal project, and it constantly varies with changing business needs. You can use a set of quantifiable metrics to evaluate and optimize the effectiveness of the portal governance.
Portals bring together different constituents with overlapping timelines, competing interests, and conflicting priorities. This complexity makes portal governance an essential tool that can help the portal realize its full potential within the organization. Portal governance deserves to be an integral part of the portal project. It should be applied systematically for each phase of the portal life cycle.
Portal failures can often be symptomatic of broken portal governance. Therefore, organizations seeking to enhance portal effectiveness should carefully consider building up portal governance in a structured manner adapted to the culture of the organization and to the specific needs of the portal.
- Participate in the discussion forum.
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Refer to the WebSphere Portal Information Center.
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Refer to the WebSphere Portal product documentation.
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Check out the developerWorks WebSphere Portal zone.
Pradeep Behl is a Senior Consulting IT Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus who assists customers with design, evaluation, and best practices of architectures based on WebSphere Portal. He has presented in the WebSphere Portal Technical Conference. His current areas of technical interest include Portal Governance and Virtual Portal best practices. You can reach him at pbehl@us.ibm.com.
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