“I want a Portal” the business says. “OK,” says IT, “What do you want it to do?” The business scratches its head for a moment. “Well, what can a Portal do?” the business asks.
It's a two fold process of analysts asking business people what they want and the business people responding by asking what they can have. Such is the classic chicken and egg scenario of requirements analysis. Technology occasionally drives opportunities for the business and then the business can make decisions about how to best use that technology supported by people from IS.
I make a keen distinction between IS and IT – systems and technology. In my experience what both camps often forget is that they have something in common and that's the 'I' in both IS and IT – Information. IT gets too bogged down in the technology and IS also tends to fall into that trap too. What they both need to remember is that it's the process that is vital. However the traditional "gather all of your requirements" and then go design and build something does not always work. The business, frankly, doesn't understand or like that method and in this day and age it's a little antiquated.
A large system implementation like a Portal needs partitioning and iteration. Neither IS nor the business really know what the end game is because there will be too many disruptive technologies and disruptive business practices along the way. Therefore thinking big but acting small is a very valid way of approaching Portal design. I particularly like Roger Session's article on Enterprise Architecture for this.
Portal implementations that I have been involved in have always fallen upon this method whether by design or not. `A picture paints a thousand words' goes the saying and this rings ever so true with getting the business to think about what it would like in its Portal. In fact even a whole Portal implementation provides a good basis on what the next version of the Portal should contain in terms of features, functionality, look and feel, performance and support.
So what has been my Portal journey then? Well it starts back in 1999.
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