Portal leadership team retreat

Members of the Portal Leadership Team gathered on August 19, 2013, in Folwell Hall for a half-day retreat to launch a content governance process and to energize the team for the release of the rough draft this fall.

What’s content governance? The risk of launching this type of portal is that it can become a free-for-all -- with lots of messy, disorganized content. The Portal Leadership Team is seeking to establish a governance structure that ensures a unified and meaningful experience for the U.

The Team watches a demonstration of the Portal rough draft.

Some of the questions posed to the leadership team were examples of the issues that need to be solved ahead of time, such as:

• What are the criteria for deciding what constitutes an alarm versus a notification?  Who decides what meets each criteria set?  
• Who decides what the attributes will be?  Who gets to use which attributes when they create content?
• Which content appears on the home page? Which content appears in fixed/immovable positions?

The visual agenda for the retreat.

In a consensus workshop, the team tackled the question: “What does the content governance group need to understand and commit to in order to be able to set up the rules and processes around which content will be governed for launch and in the first year?” The team worked on developing the principles from which to make the governance decisions, including a focus on end users, collaboration, responsiveness and flexibility.

The team also saw an early demonstration of the rough draft of the portal, which will be released on September 16. Feedback on the work done so far was very positive. "I was encouraged and excited by the demonstration and the retreat itself," said team member Carrie Meyer. "It's reassuring to know that a broadly representative group is working on the Portal governance model proposal, including great people from each campus in the system."

Leadership and Project team members from each campus attended the retreat: 

• Amber Bailey (University Relations, UMC) 
• Andrea Wilson (Human Resources, UMR)
• Ann Freeman (University Relations, UMTC)
• Ben Cashen (Information Technology/Analytics and Reporting, UMTC)
• Carla Boyd (Office of the Registrar, UMD)
• Carrie Meyer (Enterprise Financial System, UMTC)
• Cynthia Murdoch (ESUP Portal Project, UMTC)
• Julie Selander (Chair of Portal Leadership Team; Academic Support Resources, UMTC)
• Kelly Krattiger (Office of Human Resources, UMTC)
• Kim Doberstein (ESUP Portal Project, UMTC)
• LeeAnn Melin (Office of Undergraduate Education, UMTC)
• Mike Vandenberg (Office of Admissions, UMM)
• Sandra Ecklein (myU, UMTC)
• Scott Barnard (Organizational Effectiveness, UMTC)
• Susan Geller (ESUP Portal Project, UMTC)

For more on the portal visit z.umn.edu/portal.