How This Project Benefits You
The Portal Optimization Project is designed with every member of our community in mind. Select your role to see what's in it for you.
Faster Access to Everything
Pages load in under 1.5 seconds — no more waiting at registration or during add/drop periods.
Streamlined Self-Service
Enroll in courses, view your degree progress, and manage your academic records in a cleaner, more intuitive interface.
Built for Accessibility
Fully WCAG-compliant design ensures every student can navigate the portal with confidence, regardless of ability.
Project Objectives
- Create exciting user experiences that meet modern web design and accessibility standards.
- Drive system performance efficiencies and decouple from the current architecture.
- Improve operational effectiveness of the supporting team while delivering new scope as demand grows.
Guiding Principles
Every decision we make is anchored in a set of shared values that keep the project aligned and student-focused.
Project KPIs
- Usability: Tested with students at an 80% or higher error free rate.
- Performance: All page load times are less than 2 seconds.
- Process: Course registration process is faster due to system performance improvements.
- Scope Completion/Burn-Up: The cumulative number of features being delivered increases steadily throughout the project lifecycle.
The Journey
Our Adventure Thus Far
The my.harvard team—product managers, designers, engineers, QA, and support partners across HUIT and the Schools—has been moving this modernization forward in deliberate, student-centered steps: we first proposed a redesigned Public Course Search experience and carried it from concept through beta launch in December 2024, proving out the new design approach and underlying technical direction.
Building on that momentum, we then brought forward the broader my.harvard Portal Optimization proposal to extend the modern experience to logged-in self-service, and began delivering early-access capabilities to an initial group of adopters in January 2026 to gather real-world feedback and performance data.
With those learnings in hand, we are now focused on the next major milestone: the expected delivery of the modernized student and delegate portal in June 2026, bringing faster, more consistent, and more accessible experiences to the workflows students rely on most.
Our Path to Impact
July 2024
Course Search BETA project kicks off with initial delivery in December.
July 2025
Student and Delegate portal work kicks off with delivery targeted for June 2026.
July 2026
Student and Delegate go-live. Work kicks off for Teaching, Advising and Alumni with delivery targeted for June 2027.
July 2027
Portal Optimization fully delivered and transitioned to operational support; entire legacy portal is retired.
Our Progress in Numbers
Typical Load Time
<1.5s
Load times significantly decreased from over 10s at peak times to <1.5s on average.
Page Views
113,000
Page views on the BETA application in the 2026 calendar year alone.
Collaboration
200+
Project partnerships established across our community.
What’s Next?
Community Engagement for Student and Delegate launch!
Spring 2026
In Progress- Stakeholder Testing
- Town Hall Events
- Email Campaigns
- “Canvas the Campus” with Content
- Go-Live Swag Giveaways
- Knowledge Content Sharing