Portal management: the key to a successful intranet

At Habanero, portal sustainment is three key activities: support and maintenance, release management, and portal management. These three actions are linked in a symbiotic relationship.

Each level in the pyramid relies on the other, and each requires a different skill-set. Support and maintenance and release management will deliver value to your organization, but you can’t simply schedule portal management and hope it will automatically do the same.

Support and maintenance

Support and maintenance encompasses the activities required to ensure that your system delivers when it should as it should. This includes service desk, support, and infrastructure management.

To some, this is just keeping the lights on, but to us support and maintenance is more than that. Having a team in place that can respond to issues and recommend solutions when needed is a key component of a high-functioning portal.

Release management

Effective release management ensures all design enhancements, functionality changes, or defect fixes introduced into the system follow a systematic and efficient process. This requires scheduled releases throughout the year paired with analysis, design, development, and testing cycles.

Support and maintenance and release management are the two muscles that keep your technology moving. If set-up properly and regularly checked in on, they keep churning in an efficient and predictable way.

The next step: portal management

Where are you going with your portal? And at what pace and what cost? These are the types of questions that can only be answered by portal management.

Portal management involves understanding how employees interact with each other and with technology, as well as focusing on driving toward business outcomes. To do this, visioning workshops, planning and road-mapping exercises, iterative problem solving activities, change management techniques, and governance solutions are used to push toward desired results.

Portal management, when paired with release management and support and maintenance, is the key to have a popular, engaging, and effective intranet.