Rationalize Your Application Portfolio
Establish an evergreen application portfolio management (APM) program to deliver the best possible return on investment.
Member Challenge
When organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor:
- No dedicated or centralized effort to manage the app portfolio means no single source of truth is available to support informed decision-making.
- Organizations acquire more applications over time, creating redundancy, waste, and the need for additional support.
- Organizations are more vulnerable to changing markets. Flexibility and growth are compromised when applications are unadaptable or cannot scale.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- You cannot outsource application strategy.
- Modern software options have lessened the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. But your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require centralized oversight to ensure the best overall return on investment.
- Application portfolio management is the mechanism to ensure that the applications in your enterprise are delivering value and support for your value streams and business capabilities. Understanding value, satisfaction, technical health, and total cost of ownership are critical to digital transformation, modernization, and roadmaps.
Impact and Result
Build an APM program that is ready for action and fit for size:
- Understand your current state, needs, and goals for your application portfolio management.
- Create an application and platform inventory that is built for better decision making.
- Rationalize your apps with business priorities and communicate risk in operational terms.
- Create a roadmap that improves communication between those who own, manage, and support your applications.
Research & Tools
| Name | Actions |
|---|
1. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Deck – A guide that helps you establish your core application inventory, simplified rationalization, redundancy comparison, and modernization roadmap.
Enterprises have more applications than they need and rarely apply oversight to monitor the health, cost, and relative value of applications to ensure efficiency and minimal risk. This blueprint will help you build a streamlined application portfolio management process.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
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Rationalize Your Application Portfolio – Phases 1-4
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2. Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool – A tool that assesses your current application portfolio.
Visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices will help inform and guide your next steps.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
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Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool
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3. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Playbook – A template that builds your application portfolio management playbook.
Capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
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Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Playbook
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4. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Tool – A tool that stores application information and allows you to execute rationalization and build a portfolio roadmap.
This tool is the central hub for the activities within Rationalize Your Application Portfolio.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
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Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Tool
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5. Application TCO Calculator – A tool to help you calculate TCO for applications in your portfolio.
Use this tool to compile the various costs of your applications.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
|
Application TCO Calculator
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6. Application Portfolio Assessment: Ask Your Users How They Really Feel Deck – Gauge and assess teammate feedback to refine your understanding of how well their needs are being met, along with actionable steps to drive improvement.
Listening to your users is critical. In this technology keynote session, we’ll explore how Info-Tech's Application Portfolio Assessment diagnostic uncovers end-user sentiment toward your application portfolio and how these insights can inform your decisions to upgrade, maintain, or retire applications.
Learn more in this Info-Tech LIVE 2024 presentation.
| Name | Actions |
|---|---|
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Onsite Workshop: Rationalize Your Application Portfolio
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Do-It-Yourself Implementation
The slides in this Best Practice Blueprint will walk you step-by-step through every phase of your project with supporting tools and templates ready for you to use.
Project Accelerator Workshop
You can also use this Best Practice Blueprint to facilitate your own project accelerator workshop within your organization using the workshop slides and facilitation instructions provided in the Appendix.
Module 1: Lay Your Foundations
The Purpose
- Work with key corporate stakeholders to come to a shared understanding of the benefits and aspects of application portfolio management.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Establish the goals of APM.
- Set the scope of APM responsibilities.
- Establish business priorities for the application portfolio.
| Activities | Outputs |
|---|---|
| 1.1 Assess your current application portfolio |
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| 1.2 Determine narrative |
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| 1.3 Define goals and metrics |
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| 1.4 Define application categories |
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| 1.5 Determine steps and roles |
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Module 2: Improve Your Inventory
The Purpose
- Gather information on your applications to build a detailed inventory and identify areas of redundancy.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Populated inventory based on your and your team’s current knowledge.
- Understanding of outstanding data and a plan to collect it.
| Activities | Outputs |
|---|---|
| 2.1 Populate inventory |
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| 2.2 Assign to business capabilities |
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Module 3: Rationalize Your Applications
The Purpose
Work with the application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Dispositions for individual applications
- Application rationalization framework
| Activities | Outputs |
|---|---|
| 3.1 Assess business value |
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| 3.2 Assess technical health |
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| 3.3 Assess end-user perspective |
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| 3.4 Assess total cost of ownership |
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Module 4: Populate Your Roadmap
The Purpose
- Work with application delivery specialists to determine the strategic plans for your apps and place these in your portfolio roadmap.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Prioritized initiatives
- Initial application portfolio roadmap
- Ongoing structure of APM
| Activities | Outputs |
|---|---|
| 4.1 Review APM Snapshot results |
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| 4.2 Review Rationalization results |
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| 4.3 Determine dispositions |
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| 4.4 Assess redundancies (optional) |
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| 4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional) |
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| 4.6 Prioritize initiatives |
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| 4.7 Determine ongoing cadence |
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Testimonials
Best: The engagement met 100% of my expectations. My team was able to implement the guidance and learning in real time with the analyst. Worst: N/A
+ve : Very effectively scheduled, call opened on time, quick intros, opportunity to share context, practical advice based on sound models/frameworks -ve : None
Even though I am new to architecture landscape everyone was very welcoming and I was not intimidated by the content.
Expert, friendly and collaborative advice.
Too early to estimate savings at this point. Looks really positive. We can fill out a survey at the end of the work.
Hans is a wealth of information and a welcome knowledge-asset!
This engagement has helped RTD establish a baseline measure of our Application Portfolio giving us better command over which systems need to be prioritized for replacement or refurbishment. It also gives us great insight as to where capabilities are nee...
Excellent knowledge and able to put it quickly into the context of our organisation
Andrew was very helpful. There is a lot of material to parse through - all positive
This was a great start to this guided implementation. I look forward to seeing the actual results at the end.
Great session with Ricardo who clearly and expertly unpacked and explained everything I need to know to get to the next stage.
It was great to learn about APM and how it can be utilized. This is something that we will plan to implement in the future. An executive summary would help us in communicating to stakeholders what APM is, how it works, and what the results mean.
Hong was extremely helpful, pliable and accessible. We greatly appreciate his patience and expertise. Worst part is the rationizations input tab....
Another excellent & insightful meeting with Hans! His App spreadsheet is really helping us uncover a lot of facts about applications are users like/dislike. Soon we will present the findings to the Execs, which will be an eye opener for them. This is Sha...
Suneel does a great job to help put context around approach and ask good questions to help us shape what it is that would help guide us to get the most value of approach.
Alignment and explanation of how I can use the tool to bring value by doing an Application Portfolio Management exercise to the org and more importantly the different audiences that could benefit.
Having the discussions about what EA is thinking vs reality. Take that with the methodology of the offering will assist when working within the DOH business and help with expectations management.
Best part - a proven cost effective framework supported by knowledgeable people
Best part - Hans is exceptionally knowledgeable and a skilled facilitator. This is a tough topic to tackle, fraught with politics and fear, and he puts teams and participants at ease by help them fully understand the intent and expected outcomes. He ha...
The PPT Slides and Excel templates are awesome!!! Also, Hong's advice was invaluable!! No negatives whatsoever!
Kieran was an excellent partner for this workshop. He was flexible, knowledgeable, and helped build trust with our business partners.
Hans is an expert in his field. He is a great sounding board for my plans and thoughts, mainly because he validates what I am saying but also aligns me when I'm on the wrong track. I feel he has tried to understand our business and my case, so is able to...
Best parts: 1. Positive and friendly service. 2. Understood my need and was flexible to accommodate for it. 3. Very timely follow-up after the call. Worst: None.
The methodology is sound and I use it in the presentation. The advisors show great interest to help. We need more to work on solutions and have stuff automated. I would not call it bad, I would call it improvable.
It was a great and instrumental experience. Mr. Suneel, did a great job of guiding and explaining the tools and the most efficient way to use them for our specific needs. We really needed a one stop shop for all our applications. The inventory tool has b...