Since I am currently leading an enterprise portal rollout, I wanted to share a few thoughts on whats there in such effort that does not meet the eye.
Political factors aside, strictly on the technical end there are a few creases that need to be ironed out early in the project and some of those are
- Identifying the Portal stakeholders (could be different from project stakeholders)
- Targeting the audience that defines the portal strategy and involving them
- Requirement Gathering from the enterprise and prioritizing since you will be most probably deluged with the results
- Define templates (MOSS) that fit the need of the enterprise; its recommended to have appropriate number of templates instead of having one kitchen-sink template
- Planning the training since the audience mostly carries an exceedingly varied mix of technical skills so the training has to be exhaustive and with screenshots
- Planning the first day of portal since there could be many groups within the enterprise and 'leaders' should be the ones to run with it and introduce it to their own departments/divisions
- Define proper handoff procedures esp. for the phase of Portal sharing with the audience and agree with client IT on well defined responsibility for support
Every project remains unique however the above approach caters to most portal projects and while technology factors may change, little do they affect the overall course of such efforts.