Chapter 3 Mobile Portal Assessment Worksheet

This appendix provides a planning worksheet to help with your mobile portal deployment process.

This appendix contains the following sections:

• Business Objectives

• Technical Goals

• User Behaviors and Patterns

• Performance and Capacity

• Front-End Systems

• Growth Projections

• Authentication and Secure Access

• Channels

• Quality Goals

The questions are provided as starting points. Use them to learn more about your organization’s business needs and potential areas of concern around deploying mobile portals.

Business Objectives

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Identify the business reasons that you want a mobile portal:

  • Improve ease of access to information

  • Speed up access to information

  • Expand the types of users who can use your portal

  • Improve user’s experience

  • Provide new services

  • Other

  Define which portal users will be allowed mobile access:

  • All portal users

  • Field employees (using PDA-capable applications, for example)

  • Other user categories

  Define which portal users will be allowed voice access:

  • All portal users

  • Users who cannot use visual interfaces

  • Other user categories

Technical Goals

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Indicate reasons that you want to provide mobile access to your portal:

  • Deliver a service

  • Provide information

  • Enable field employees to access your portal

  • Save time for users

  Describe your target population.

• List what applications you want to provide and the reasons you want to provide them.

• Chart planned transaction volume (including during peak use times) and level of concurrency.

• Identify how users will access your mobile portal:

  • Public carrier

  • WiFI (wireless LAN)

  • Mobile messaging devices

  • WAP-capable mobile phones

  • General packet radio service (GPRS)

  Identify standards and requirements for WAP gateways.

• Document the phases you will use to deploy your mobile portal.

User Behaviors and Patterns

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation

• Define your user profile.

• Describe how your mobile portal users differ from your other portal users.

• Describe the experience your mobile portal users have with mobile devices:

  • Seasoned (provide profiles and define degrees of use)

  • Neophyte (provide profiles and define degrees of use)

  Chart your growth projections for mobile users:

  • Immediate

  • Mid-term

  • Long-term

  Identify the content your mobile portal will provide:

  • Existing

  • New

  Describe why your users will use your mobile portal content and identify how they have used the same content previously.

Performance and Capacity

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Identify your requirements for:

  • Performance

  • High availability

  • Response times

  Consider whether your requirements are suitable for peak use times.

• Identify user activity and how it fluctuates.

• Analyze your existing data regarding user connections and Web traffic.

Front-End Systems

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Identify what mobile devices you will support:

  • Mobile phones (brands and models)

  • PDAs (brands and models)

  Identify what browsers (and versions) you will support:

  • HDML

  • HTML

  • cHTML

  • iHTML

  • XHTML

  • VoiceXML

  • WML

  • JHTML

  Identify what type of applications you will provide.

Growth Projections

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Specify what countries your users are in.

• Identify how mobile access will change the use of your portal and its content:

  • Increase use (how and by how much)

  • Change use (how and by how much)

  Identify how mobile access will affect your business objectives.

• Study how mobile access to your portal will affect content and identify what changes, if any, will be needed.

Authentication and Secure Access

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Document your authentication and encryption policies.

• Describe why a gateway is needed.

• Identify when SSL should be used:

  • Authentication

  • Access to specific channels

  • Other

  Identify whether your single sign-on requirements will change for mobile access.

• Identify authentication and encryption concerns of your applications.

Channels

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Specify how your mobile portal offerings will differ from your HTML-based portal.

• Review existing portal content and identify what content your mobile portal will provide:

  • Existing

  • New

  Identify what content must be revised (shortened or reorganized).

Quality Goals

Check and elaborate on the answers that apply to your situation.

• Develop plans, including time-lines, for how you will provide mobile access to your portal.

• Identify processes you can apply to ensure that your deployment will progress smoothly.

  • Testing

  • Maintenance of existing service

  • Redundancy

  Define baseline performance and reliability measurements.

• Identify which mobile devices you will test.

• Identify what your change control procedures will be.