Service Delivery

PORTAL Technologies Corporation delivers a wide range of mission- and business-driven professional services. We collaborate with our clients to determine the scale, scope, disciplines, methodologies, enabling technologies, tools, and delivery requirements as well as the resource requirements, schedules, risks, and budgets to focus and help in assuring their missions are successful. Our team of experienced professionals understands complex business needs and working in close collaboration with our clients, delivers the right solutions, balancing business requirements, quality, cost, and speed to delivery.

Delivering successful results begins with understanding the scale of the mission and requirements. A shared understanding of scale is one of the keys to successful delivery, accounting for right-sized scope, services, applied methodologies, documentation, and operational and organizational considerations. Some of the questions we must answer before starting include: Will the entire enterprise be impacted or a set or subset of the organization, a specific business unit, or operation? Will the endeavor initiate a program with multiple projects or constitute a single project, set of tasks, and/or processes?

PORTAL’s unique service delivery approach incorporates scope and complexity. Projects have two primary areas for complexity – the technical aspects and the business scope (such as schedule, cost, risk, communications). Whereas the technical scope centers on building the desired product, it is often the business scope that adversely affects the product through conflicting decisions. Management complexity includes the business aspects of the project, staff, relationships of the project to others, and project organization. There are many variables that can add complexity to the management of a project which must weighed and appropriately incorporated.

Understanding and addressing complexity is critical to improved planning and implementation. The effectiveness of the project relies on taking the simplest approach that meets the requirements while avoiding complex situations, both technical and managerial, which can impede progress.

The PORTAL Service Delivery approach is unique, incorporating scope, scalability, and complexity. We apply both standardized and our Right-Sizing methodologies, best practices, and industry standards throughout all of our service disciplines. PORTAL’s approaches also leverage our experience with a wide range of client owned, Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS), and Government Off-The-Shelf (GOTS) solutions/products, in concert with our industry-leading vision, strategy, architecture, engineering, advanced development and integration services. We have an understanding of when and how integration and service orientation help meet and exceed our client’s mission and goals while reducing enterprise, organizational and operational costs.

Adaptive Design is an approach to meeting and exceeding asset building and re-use challenges. There are an incredible number of systems and solutions that are built over and over again due to evolving requirements and constraints aimed at meeting immediate schedules. Adaptive Design takes a holistic collaborative view to understand the wider and longer-term solution set requirements and then translating that through the SDLC process to develop the right solution. PORTAL has extensive understanding, experience, and expertise helping define this approach from concept through design, engineering, deployment, and operations maintenance cycles.

PORTAL supports a variety of methodologies and has certified professionals that ensure project success at every level. PORTAL supports a wide range of methodologies:

Adaptive 365 – A lifecycle methodology, developed by PORTAL focused on the architecture, design, engineering, and development of solutions that adapt to changing business and regulatory requirements, embracing industry and enterprise standards resulting in high business value re-usable assets for our clients.

Software Development – Agile, Iterative, Waterfall, RAD and Extreme Programming.

Agile –Agile methodologies are evolutionary, adaptive and highly collaborative. PORTAL supports various agile methodologies implementations which are normally tuned for each client’s unique environment.

CMMI – The PORTAL Service Delivery approach provides guidelines to apply to determine the gaps in organization policies, and procedures. PORTAL leverages the SEI CMMI guidelines to ensure management and control processes are used in completing projects when required. PORTAL has also leveraged CMMI processes in developing Right-Sized processes that fit individual client operating divisions and also transformed them for enterprise use.

ITIL – A collection of best practices that aim to improve and then maintain a certain level of computing services quality. ITIL covers organizational structure and skill requirements via a comprehensive set of procedures with which an organization can manage its IT operations. PORTAL applies ITIL where practical because it does not rely on a particular vendor’s technology, and it applies to all aspects of IT infrastructure.

Assessment – PORTAL is highly experienced and successfully facilitates and/or delivers assessments for and with our clients. We assess business and technical processes, solutions and technologies based on industry and internally refined methodologies and tools. We align and integrate our approaches with our client’s related governance, guidance, and tools to perform a wide range of assessments including Analyses of Alternatives, Landscape Analyses, Decision Support, Gap and Risk Analysis amongst others.

Project Management – The various ways in which projects are initiated, planned, and executed. For different industries and different types of projects, there are specific methodologies for managing projects. PORTAL supports the PMI project management methodologies as defined in the PMBOK, which includes Agile Project Management.

Mission, business and regulatory requirements are the key drivers for continuously evolving and adapting agencies and organizations. Technology is a key enabler. Our clients need to do more with less and faster than ever before. There are very different technology approaches to facilitate meeting and exceeding these very real needs. PORTAL understands and delivers with the breadth and depth of knowledge, experience, training, incredible reach back, solid strategic partnerships and demonstrated capabilities to consistently help drive and deliver innovative services, solutions and practices along with leveraging client-owned, COTS, GOTS, and advanced custom solutions.

Understanding the wide array of hardware, software, processes, and tooling along with their inter-relationships is a continuous integrated process at PORTAL. We research, develop, build, and test solutions for our clients based on our knowledge of current and new client requirements, work environments, challenges, users, preference, deployment, tooling and skills considerations. Working together, we help answer the tough questions and collaboratively meet the challenges, always focused on quality and cost-conscious delivery of services using the right tools and technologies that will result in true assets for our clients.

PORTAL continues to grow our extraordinary teams of highly experienced and multi-disciplined people skilled in the tools, techniques, and proven methodologies continuously refined over 30 years— a key differentiator.

Our systematic and professional project management systems serve to identify the right people to meet client project and task performance requirements while optimizing core team capabilities and reach through our strategic partnerships. PORTAL also emphasizes education, training and information sharing activities to maximizes our capacity to perform and deliver for our clients.

PORTAL provides leadership on numerous complex technology development and implementation assignments for multiple customers. We have refined our internal project management methodologies over many years. We bring our lessons learned and best practices to every project and use the following key management principles to ensure successful results:

• Use the right people, in the right place, at the right time – thereby controlling costs
• Maintain clear and continuous project management accountability
• Maintain full and timely communications with the client as findings and issues emerge
• Focus always on the client’s view of the ultimate results needed

PORTAL also applies an overall quality management approach which begins with thorough research and preparation of detailed project plans with special attention to definition of specific outcomes and products expected, including specific assessment techniques to be applied to each project classification, and specific criteria to determine completeness on a case-by-case basis. The PORTAL philosophy is based on internal performance measurement goals that result in quality products produced for our clients on time and within budget. Our Program Manager, through day-to-day communications, hands-on planning, and final review of products will facilitate quality management oversight.

PORTAL’s systematic resource management approach has three key parts:

• Organization and Accountability
• Project Scoping and Planning
• Performance Measurement

PORTAL has a stable, complete, and auditable contract and financial management system (CFMS) which has been refined and improved since opening our doors in 1991. We understand the importance of traceability from award to closing, and every step along the way. Our system supports all phases of contract management activities across contract types from initial entry, through amendments, time and expense processing, payroll, invoicing, and payments – across multiple fiscal years.

Contract and financial management is an important part of PORTAL’s Service Delivery approach. Strong systems are important but effective communications with clients and contracting stakeholders are essential. PORTAL communicates with the contracting office to establish our approach, schedule regular meetings, ensure status reports and invoices provide the correct level of information desired working in close partnership in meeting the mission and goals for every engagement.