ABSTRACT
Portal architects can take proactive measures to adopt the best practices and identify the common pitfalls in portal programs. This chapter explores some of the common pitfalls, antipatterns, and problem patterns that lead to the failure of portal programs. The main technology-related reasons for failures are complexity of portal technology stack, end-to-end performance, insufficient infrastructure, user experience issues, information architecture and information discovery challenges, and not having user-centric approach. The portal project management team should proactively reach out to all concerned stakeholders and keep them updated about the program updates. Portal-based collaboration platforms and knowledge management systems face another type of problem: cultural differences. All efforts should be made to position a portal as an indispensable tool for their daily activities that encourage active participation of the end users. A portal, which is usually positioned as the gateway to unified interface, often takes the responsibility to weave all the technologies, services, systems, and applications.
