Start Simple with Portals for External Stakeholders
Launching a portal for external stakeholders can streamline interactions, reduce the workload on your team, and boost overall efficiency. However, there's a common pitfall that organizations make by trying to perfect everything from the start.
Instead of focusing on a pixel-perfect design for your first version, it's better to go live with something that solves a significant pain point.
Utility trumps aesthetics every time, and you can always iterate later to improve the visual appeal. You should start with what works, not what looks best.
If you're deciding between which use cases to focus on or need help identifying them, here are some pointers:
Understand what causes pain between internal and external stakeholders with high specificity, as these pain points often result in high value use cases for implementing a portal; you can use the 5Ws framework to help in this process
Estimate the value of pain points to assist with prioritization and building a case for why a portal is worth allocating resources within your organization; you can reframe costs (both opportunity and expense) in tangible terms to increase effectiveness when crafting your argument
Prioritize based on impact and feasibility to ensure that the use cases identified are addressing the optimal amount of pain without causing you more pain to implement it; you can use the MSCW framework to ruthlessly prioritize to a small set of functionality
Once you have your target use cases, your next step is to engage external stakeholders to discover more details about their needs and potential requirements.
That same group will also play an important role in how you test and rollout your portal. Keep them involved during the process with regular updates by providing a mix of narratives and concise screen recordings.
You can also get bonus points (ask your manager for these, not me) by having them test alongside you, and participate in a "soft launch" or beta rollout of your portal.
TLDR: Start with a utility-first approach that addresses painful use cases that are feasible to solve. Get a cohort of external stakeholders involved early.
