When organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor:
Build an APM program that is ready for action and fit for size:
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.
Visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices will help inform and guide your next steps.
Capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.
This tool is the central hub for the activities within Rationalize Your Application Portfolio.
Use this tool to compile the various costs of your applications.
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
28 Average Days Saved
University of Ottawa
Too early to estimate savings at this point. Looks really positive. We can fill out a survey at the end of the work.
New Mexico Department Of Health
Hans is a wealth of information and a welcome knowledge-asset!
Regional Transportation District
This engagement has helped RTD establish a baseline measure of our Application Portfolio giving us better command over which systems need to be pri. Read More
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 needed meet organizational alignment. Read Less
Excellent knowledge and able to put it quickly into the context of our organisation
NH Advisory LLC
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.
Oregon Department of Justice
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. Read More
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. Read Less
Community Aid, Inc.
Hong was extremely helpful, pliable and accessible. We greatly appreciate his patience and expertise. Worst part is the rationizations input ta. Read More
Hong was extremely helpful, pliable and accessible. We greatly appreciate his patience and expertise. Worst part is the rationizations input tab. Read Less
North American Air Travel Insurance Agents Ltd.
Another excellent & insightful meeting with Hans! His App spreadsheet is really helping us uncover a lot of facts about applications are users like. Read More
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 Sharon, BTW :) Read Less
Braun Intertec Corporation
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 . Read More
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. Read Less
Diamond Offshore, LLC
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 import. Read More
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. Read Less
Tri-State Generation and Transmission Assoc.
Washington State Department of Health
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. Read More
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. Read Less
The Corporation of United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry
Australian Institute of Company Directors
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. Read More
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 has also been an incredible partner and fun to work with!! Worst part - we don't get to keep Hans full time ;-) Read Less
SUNS LEGACY PARTNERS, LLC
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.
Alfred H. Knight Holding
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 align. Read More
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 offer more value each time we speak. Really having Hans's voice behind my plans reassures AHK we're on the right track, which will lead to quicker and more confident decision making and ultimately progressing us on our maturity and development journey. Read Less
Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction
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 c. Read More
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. Read Less
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. Read More
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. Read Less
Cameron County, TX
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 . Read More
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 been invaluable and is helping our department keep track of our Applications and detailed information to better manage. The only negative side if any, was the tool did require quite a bit of time and work as it was extensive and detailed but I do understand the more information input the better overall results you will get. Overall a very valuable experience and tools that will continue to help our department. Read Less
City of Penticton
Pima County Community College District
Suneel was amazing! This initiative has proven to be the foundation on which so many other initiatives are being build on/around. I didn't expect. Read More
Suneel was amazing! This initiative has proven to be the foundation on which so many other initiatives are being build on/around. I didn't expect to get the tremendous value out of it that we did. Read Less
The best part of the workshop was working with Hans . He lead the workshop and gave great insights all along the way. Looking forward to more worki. Read More
The best part of the workshop was working with Hans . He lead the workshop and gave great insights all along the way. Looking forward to more working sessions with him. Read Less
University of the Fraser Valley
Best: Seeing the team pull together their knowledge of our applications and beginning to see the light bulbs go off as they saw the metrics and res. Read More
Best: Seeing the team pull together their knowledge of our applications and beginning to see the light bulbs go off as they saw the metrics and results come together. Worst: Nothing about this experience was bad. So this is relatively minor. I could see as a team leader, if I wasn't invested in the effort, that parts of the workshop could go awry. I started the Training Academy material on this topic, so i was fairly prepared. So my suggestion is to recommend the team leaders at least take the APM Academy course prior to the workshop. Knowing the value going in sure makes a difference!! Read Less
Support your ongoing business objectives with a rationalized application portfolio while remaining aligned with your current and future technology needs.
This course makes up part of the Applications Certificate.
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Academy: Application Portfolio Management | Introduction
An active membership is required to access Info-Tech Academy
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 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.
Assess your current application portfolio
Define goals and metrics
Define application categories
Determine steps and roles
Assign to business capabilities
Work with the application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.
Assess business value
Assess technical health
Assess end-user perspective
Assess total cost of ownership
Review APM Snapshot results
Review Rationalization results
Assess redundancies (optional)
Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)
Determine ongoing cadence
Many lack visibility into their overall application portfolio, focusing instead on individual projects or application development. Inevitably, application sprawl creates process and data disparities, redundant applications, and duplication of resources, and it stands as a significant barrier to organizational agility and responsiveness. The shift from strategic investment to application maintenance creates an unnecessary constraint on innovation and value delivery.
With the rise and convenience of SaaS solutions, IT has an increasing need to discover and support all applications in the organization. Unmanaged and unsanctioned applications can lead to increased reputational risk. What you don’t know will hurt you.
You can outsource development, you can even outsource maintenance, but you cannot outsource accountability for the portfolio. Organizations need a holistic dashboard of application performance and dispositions to help guide and inform planning and investment discussions. Application portfolio management (APM) can’t tell you why something is broken or how to fix it, but it is an important tool to determine if an application’s value and performance are up to your standards and can help meet your future goals.
Hans Eckman
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group
Application Inventory
The artifact that documents and informs the organization of your application portfolio.
Application Rationalization
The process of collecting information and assessing your applications to determine recommended dispositions.
Application Alignment
The process of revealing application information through interviewing stakeholders and aligning to organizational capabilities.
Application Roadmap
The artifact that showcases the strategic directions for your applications over a given timeline.
The ongoing practice of:
Managing your application portfolio is essential regardless of its size or whether your software is purchased or developed in house. Each organization must have some degree of application portfolio management to ensure that applications deliver value efficiently and that their risk or gradual decline in technical health is appropriately limited.
If this describes your primary goals
Leverage APM to drive application rationalization goals:
Info-Tech Insight: You can’t outsource strategy.
Modern software options have decreased the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. Your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require centralized IT oversight to ensure the best return on investment.
#1 challenge small enterprise owners face in their use of technology:
Taking appropriate security precautions
The costs of needed upgrades to technology
The time it takes to fix problems
The cost of maintaining technology
Lack of expertise
Breaks in service
Having more applications than an organization needs means unnecessarily high costs and additional burden on the teams that support the applications. Especially in the case of small enterprises, this is added pressure the IT team cannot afford.
A poorly maintained portfolio will eventually hurt the organization more than it hurts IT. Legacy systems, complex environments, or anything that leads to a portfolio that can’t adapt to changing organizational needs will eventually become a barrier to organizational growth and accomplishing objectives. Often the blame is put on the IT department.
56% of small businesses cited inflexible technology as a barrier to growth
The benefits of APM
APM identifies areas where you can reduce core spending and reinvest in innovation initiatives.
Other benefits can include:
Enhance enterprise agility by leveraging an Agile mindset and continuously improving your delivery throughput, quality, value realization, and adaptive governance.
Transform your application portfolio into a cohesive service catalog aligned to your business capabilities by discovering, rationalizing, and modernizing your applications while improving application maintenance, management, and reuse.
Align your product and service improvement and execution to enterprise strategy and value realization in three key areas: defining your products and services, aligning product/service owners, and developing your product vision.
Poor Lifecycle Management
Turnover & Lack of Knowledge Transfer
Siloed Organizational Units & Decentralized IT
Business-Managed IT (Shadow IT)
Redundancy and Inefficient Spending
Disparate Apps & Data
Difficulties in Prioritizing Support
Barriers to Change & Growth
Application sprawl:
Inefficiencies within your application portfolio are created by the gradual and non-strategic accumulation of applications.
You have more apps than you need.
Only 34% of software is rated as both IMPORTANT and EFFECTIVE by users.
Financial vs. Human Benefits
Financial benefits refer to the degree to which the value source can be measured through monetary metrics and are often quite tangible.
Human benefits refer to how an application can deliver value through a user’s experience.
Inward vs. Outward Orientation
Inward orientation refers to value sources that have an internal impact and improve your organization’s effectiveness and efficiency in performing its operations.
Outward orientation refers to value sources that come from your interaction with external factors, such as the market or your customers.
Info-Tech Best Practice
Replace organizational value and fit with your strategic enterprise goals or priorities. Use the value matrix to help identify value drivers and sources of value.
Increase Revenue or
Deliver Customer Value
Reduced Costs and Drive Efficiency
Application functions that are specifically related to the impact on your organization’s ability to generate revenue and deliver value to your customers.
Reduction of overhead. How an application limits the operational costs of operational functions.
Functions that enable business capabilities that improve the organization’s ability to perform its internal operations.
Application functions that enable and improve the interaction with customers or produce market information and insights.
BUSINESS CONTINUITY/DISASTER RECOVERY
The degree to which the application is compatible with business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) policies and plans that are routinely tested and verified.
SECURITY
Applications should be aligned and compliant with ALL security policies. Are there vulnerabilities or is there a history of security incidents? Remember that threats are often internal and non-malicious.
MAINTAINABILITY (RAS)
RAS refers to an app’s reliability, availability, and serviceability. How often, how long, and how difficult is it for your resources to keep an app functioning, and what are the resulting continuity risks? This can include root causes of maintenance challenges.
ADAPTABILITY
How easily can the app be enhanced or scaled to meet changes in operational needs? Does the app fit within the organizational strategy?
INTEROPERABILITY
The degree to which an app is integrated with current systems. Apps require comprehensive technical planning and oversight to ensure they connect within the greater application architecture. Does the app fit within your enterprise architecture strategy?
Info-Tech Best Practice
Technical health represents the most important aspects and priorities for your enterprise technology. Adjust, merge, or replace these sample criteria to match your priorities and goals. For example, many teams are using SaaS and cloud readiness as technical health criteria.
Unfortunately, the business only cares about what they can see or experience.
Rationalization is your opportunity to get risk on the organization’s radar and gain buy-in for the necessary action.
Data quality
To what degree do the end users find the data quality sufficient to perform their role and achieve their desired outcome?
Effectiveness
To what degree do the end users find the application effective for performing their role and desired outcome?
Usability
To what degree do the end users find the application reliable and easy to use to achieve their desired outcome?
Satisfaction
To what degree are end users satisfied with the features of this application?
What else matters to you?
Tune your criteria to match your values and priorities.
Info-Tech Best Practice
When facing large user groups, do not make assumptions or use lengthy methods of collecting information. Use Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment to collect data by surveying your end users’ perspectives.
LICENSING AND SUBSCRIPTIONS: Your recurring payments to a vendor.
Many commercial off-the-shelf applications require a license on a per-user basis. Review contracts and determine costs by looking at per-user or fixed rates charged by the vendor.
MAINTENANCE COSTS: Your internal spending to maintain an app.
These are the additional costs to maintain an application such as support agreements, annual maintenance fees, or additional software or hosting expenses.
INDIRECT COSTS: Miscellaneous expenses necessary for an app’s continued use.
Expenses like end-user training, developer education, and admin are often neglected, but they are very real costs organizations pay regularly.
RETURN ON INVESTMENT: Perceived value of the application related to its TCO.
Some of our most valuable applications are the most expensive. ROI is an optional criterion to account for the value and importance of the application.
Info-Tech Best Practice
The TCO assessment is one area where what you are considering the ”application” matters quite a bit. An application’s peripherals or software components need to be considered in your estimates. For additional help calculating TCO, use the Application TCO Calculator from Build a Rationalization Framework.
Determine scope and categories
Build your list of applications and capabilities
Score each application based on your values
Determine outcomes based on app scoring and support for capabilities
1. Lay Your Foundations
1.1 Assess the state of your current application portfolio.
1.2 Determine narrative.
1.3 Define goals and metrics.
1.4 Define application categories.
1.5 Determine steps and roles (SIPOC).
2. Improve Your Inventory
2.1 Populate your inventory.
2.2 Align to business capabilities.
3. Rationalize Your Applications
3.1 Assess organizational value and fit.
3.2 Assess technical health.
3.3 Assess end-user perspective.
3.4 Assess total cost of ownership.
4. Populate Your Roadmap
4.1 Review APM Snapshot results.
4.2 Review rationalization results.
4.3 Determine dispositions.
4.4 Assess redundancies (optional).
4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional).
4.6 Prioritize initiatives.
4.7 Determine ongoing cadence.
Repeat according to APM cadence and application changes
The grocer was a smaller organization for the supermarket industry with a relatively low IT budget. While its portfolio consisted of a dozen applications, the organization still found it difficult to react to an evolving industry due to inflexible and overly complex legacy systems.
The IT manager found himself in a scenario where he knew the applications well but had little awareness of the business processes they supported. Application maintenance was keeping things operational, but there was little consideration given to business strategy.
As the business demanded more responsiveness to changes, the IT team needed to be able to react more efficiently and effectively while still securing the continuity of the business.
The IT manager found success by introducing APM and gaining a better understanding of the business use and future needs for the applications. The organization started small but then increased the scope over time to produce and develop techniques to aid the business in meeting strategic goals with applications.
Results
The IT manager gained credibility and trust within the organization. The organization was able to build a plan to move away from the legacy systems and create a portfolio more responsive to the dynamic needs of an evolving marketplace.
Train teams and stakeholders on APM
Model the core business processes
Collect application inventory
Assign APM responsibilities
Start small, then grow
1. Lay Your Foundations
2. Improve Your Inventory
3. Rationalize Your Applications
4. Populate Your Roadmap
1.1 Assess your current application portfolio
1.2 Determine narrative
1.3 Define goals and metrics
1.4 Define application categories
1.5 Determine steps and roles
2.1 Populate your inventory
2.2 Align to business capabilities
3.1 Assess organizational value and fit
3.2 Assess technical health
3.3 Assess end-user perspective
3.4 Assess total cost of ownership
4.1 Review APM Snapshot results
4.2 Review rationalization results
4.3 Determine dispositions
4.4 Assess redundancies (optional)
4.5 Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)
4.6 Prioritize initiatives
4.7 Determine Ongoing Cadence
Work with the appropriate management stakeholders to:
Gather information on your own understanding of your applications to build a detailed inventory and identify areas of redundancy.
Work with application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.
Work with application delivery specialists to determine the strategic plans for your apps and place these in your portfolio roadmap.
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
