Intranet project and Self-service portal system for Dingwow Inc.
Business goals and project goals
There are a number of business goals associated with the project. First, the self-service portal aims at enabling users to combine data from a variety of sources into a configurable and highly flexible interface. Second, the self-service portal will provide customizable and self-sufficient IT solution that will bring more benefits to the company. The major business goal will be to cut down the costs of running the business or administrative costs. Another benefit is streamlining common processes in the organization which will enhance smooth workflow between departments and various branches nationwide. As such, sharing of information between departments and branches in different geographical locations will be much easier. The self-service portal solution is tailored to meet the needs of both large and medium organizations (Meyler & Bengtsson, 2015). Other goals include centralization of service requests for internal services, built-in customizable routing, form data capture from various processors such as word, pdf forms, and word, and establishment of central port for common forms such as expenses and time sheets.
Related: Project Estimate Using COCOMO II
Scope
The employee self-service portal system is tailored with users in mind, considering a number of aspects including the ease of training them (Meyler & Bengtsson, 2015). Self-service users should be able to log incidents, make requests, interact in chat or through a live feed, view articles, and search database for information using a friendly website. A self-service portal system should cater to four basic categories or functions of the human resource management. These categories include benefits, payroll, organizational administration, and human resource. The self-service encompasses various administrative services such as benefit services, employee communications, and data updates. Management productivity services to be covered include salary actions, approvals and employee change actions. The organization may choose to allow employees update certain information or merely to view it depending on its sensitivity.
Time and budget constraints
Majority of organizations face time constraints during implementation of self-service portal. This may be occasioned by governance or compliance issues which may interfere with installation operations. Still, some organizations experience lack of adequate resources to cater for upgrading of their systems. Disparage IT infrastructures may also be a key hindrance and add to the costs of implementing the self-service portal. For instance, the organization may be having large volumes of paperwork which requires manual processing. This may escalate the entire cost of the project and increase completion time. Process design and implementation may take time due to the intricate processes and stages involved. For instance, developers must first document the existing processes, optimize various processes, develop new policies, create a pilot implementation, and among other time consuming processes (Ellermann et al., 2013).
General and technical requirements
There are specific general and technical requirements in the application of self-service portal. The general requirements include accelerators, configuration templates, and pre-configured self-service human resource modules for employees, process designs and tools. The user infrastructure required is access channels which mainly involve web browsers, design time tools, web dynpro, and portal runtime. The specific user infrastructure services include page building, search options, personalization, collaboration, navigation, and among others. A number of portal deployment options are available such as single central port, separate portals and federated portal network. Other key components in a self-service portal include internet (SSL), application gateway, load balancer, customer portal, reporting portal, corporate portal, TREX software, directory server and Enterprise Resource Planning system (Ellermann et al., 2013).
Related: Cost Estimation Proposal
Training and documentation
It is important to conduct training and documentation following the implementation of a self-service portal system in the organization (Meyler & Bengtsson, 2015). Employee development is critical with implementation of a self-service portal in order to optimize usage. Employee development takes the form of training which provides insights to employees. A pilot program can provide members with great opportunities for training. It is important to define and document all the existing processes. All the provisioning and deployment processes should bear formal definitions especially during the request phase of the project. The IT group should document all the existing processes prior to commencement of automating the deployment and provisioning process. Each process should be clearly defined based key metrics and ensure that manual processes are fully optimized.
Installation
A System Center Configuration Model (SCCM 2012) contains an in-built application web portal that enables users to access software or other applications that are available to them (Damati, 2015). Installation can only be carried out on a WF Management Server but not on the DW Management Server. Other types of servers can support the installation. For a successful installation, one must have the system center 2012 R2 service manager, with an update roll-up of 8 and later period. The installation also requires importing the portal .mpb management pack so that web pages can be displayed. A number of features must be activated for a complete installation. These include web server (IIS), .NET framework 3.5 features, ASP.NET 4.5, and windows authentication. Configuring the client server details and the self-service portal server completes the installation (Damati, 2015).
References
Damati, M. (2015). System Center Service Manager 2012 R2-UR8-Deploy the New Self-Service Portal. Retrieved from: http://blogs.technet.com/b/modamati/archive/2015/11/22/system- center-service-manager-2012-r2-ur8-deploy-the-new-self-service-portal-my- experience.aspx
Ellermann, T., Wilson, K., Nielsen, K., & Clark, J. (2013). Microsoft System Center Optimizing Service Manager. New York, NY: Microsoft Press.
Meyler, K., & Bengtsson, A. (2015). System Center 2012 service manager unleashed. Indianapolis, Ind: Sams.
