There is no “one size fits all.” Applying a rigid approach to rationalization with inflexible inputs can delay or prevent you from realizing value. Play to your strengths and build a framework that aligns to your goals and limitations.
Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
Define the motivations, goals, and scope of your rationalization effort. Build the action plan and engagement tactics to roll out the rationalization activities.
Understand the core assessments performed in application rationalizations. Define your application rationalization framework and degree of rigor in applying these assessments based on your goals and limitations.
Test your application rationalization framework using Info-Tech’s tool set on your first iteration. Perform a retrospective and adapt your framework based on that experience and outcomes.
Review, determine, and prioritize your dispositions to ensure they align to your goals. Initiate an application portfolio roadmap to showcase your rationalization decisions to key stakeholders.
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.
Define the goals, scope, roles, and responsibilities of your rationalization effort.
Defined motivations, long and short-term goals, and metrics for your rationalization effort.
Definition of application.
Defined roles and responsibilities for your rationalization effort.
1.1 Define motivations and goals for rationalization.
1.2 Define “application.”
1.3 Identify team and responsivities.
1.4 Adapt target dispositions.
1.5 Initiate Application Rationalization Framework (ARF).
Goals, motivations, and metrics for rationalizations
Definition of “Application”
Defined dispositions
Defined core APM team and handoffs
Review and adapt Info-Tech’s methodology and toolset.
Assess business value of applications.
Tailored application rationalization framework
Defined business value drivers
Business value scores for applications
2.1 Review Application Rationalization Tool.
2.2 Review focused apps, capabilities, and areas of functionality overlap.
2.3 Define business value drivers.
2.4 Determine the value score of focused apps.
Application Rationalization Tool
List of functional overlaps
Weighed business value drivers
Value scores for focused application
Value Calculator
Continue to review and adapt Info-Tech’s methodology and toolset.
Tailored application rationalization framework
TCO values for applications
Technical health review of applications
Recommended dispositions for applications
3.1 Determine TCO for focused apps.
3.2 Determine technical health of focused apps.
3.3 Review APA.
3.4 Review recommended dispositions.
3.5 Perform retrospective of assessments and adapt ARF.
TCO of focused applications
TCO Calculator
Technical health of focused apps
Defined rationalization criteria
Recommended disposition for focused apps
Review and perform high-level prioritization of dispositions.
Build a roadmap for dispositions.
Determine ongoing rationalization and application portfolio management activities.
Application Portfolio Roadmap
Prioritized Dispositions
4.1 Determine dispositions.
4.2 Prioritize dispositions.
4.3 Initiate portfolio roadmap.
4.4 Build an action plan for next iterations and ongoing activities.
4.5 Finalize ARF.
Disposition Prioritization Tool
Application portfolio roadmap
Action plan for next iterations and ongoing activities
"You're not rationalizing for the sake of IT, you’re rationalizing your apps to create better outcomes for the business and your customers. Consider what’s in it for delivery, operations, the business, and the customer." – Cole Cioran, Senior Director – Research, Application Delivery and Management
Applying a rigid approach with inflexible inputs can delay or prevent you from realizing value. Play to your strengths and build a framework that aligns to your goals and limitations.
Of the 11 vendor capabilities asked about by Info-Tech’s SoftwareReviews, “business value created” has the second highest relationship with overall software satisfaction.
Larger approaches take longer and are more likely to fail. Identify the applications that best address your strategic objectives, then: rationalize, learn, repeat.
This phase is intended to establish the fundamentals in launching either a rationalization initiative or ongoing practice.
Here we define goals, scope, and the involvement of various roles from both IT and the business.
This phase is intended to review a high-level approach to rationalization and determine which analyses are necessary and their appropriate level of depth.
Here we produce an initial ARF and discuss any gaps in terms of the availability of necessary data points and additional collection methods that will need to be applied.
This phase is intended to put the ARF into action and adapt as necessary to ensure success in your organization.
If appropriate, here we apply Info-Tech’s ARF and toolset and test it against a set of applications to determine how best to adapt these materials for your needs.
This phase is intended to capture results of rationalization and solidify your rationalization initiative or ongoing practice.
Here we aim to inject your dispositions into an application portfolio roadmap and ensure ongoing governance of APM activities.
Portfolios are viewed as only supportive in nature. There is no strategy or process to evaluate application portfolios effectively. As a result, organizations build a roadmap with a lack of understanding of their portfolio.
72% of organizations do not have an excellent understanding of the application portfolio (Capgemini).
Applications fail to meet their intended function, resulting in duplication, a waste of resources, and a decrease in ROI. This makes it harder for IT to justify to the business the reasons to complete a roadmap.
48% of organizations believe that there are more applications than the business requires (Capgemini).
The application portfolio is complex and pervasive and requires constant support from IT. This makes it increasingly difficult for IT to adopt or develop new strategies since its immediate goal will always be to fix what already exists. This causes large delays and breaks in the timeline to complete a roadmap.
68% of IT directors have wasted time and money because they did not have better visibility of application roadmaps (ComputerWeekly).
An application portfolio roadmap provides a visual representation of your application portfolio, is used to plan out the portfolio’s strategy over a given time frame, and assists management in key decisions. But…
A roadmap is meaningless if you haven’t done any analysis to understand the multiple perspectives on your applications.
Your application rationalization effort increases the maturity of your roadmap efforts by increasing value to the business. Go beyond the discover phase – leverage application rationalization insights to reach the improve and transform phases.
79% of organizations with high application suite satisfaction believe that IT offers the organization a competitive edge over others in the industry. (Info-Tech Research Group, N=230)
Companies with an effective portfolio are twice as likely to report high-quality applications, four times as likely to report high proficiency in legacy apps management, and six times as likely to report strong business alignment.
Projecting the ROI of application rationalization is difficult and dangerous when used as the only marker for success.
However, rationalization, when done effectively, will help drop operational or maintenance costs of your applications as well as provide many more opportunities to add value to the business.
Rationalization fails without appropriately detailed, accurate, and up-to-date information. You need to identify what information is available and assemble the teams to collect and analyze it.
Rationalization fails when you lack a clear list of strategic and collaborative priorities; priorities need to be both IT and non-IT related to align with the business objectives and provide value.
Adhering to a rigid rationalization process can be complex and costly. Play to your strengths and build an ARF based on your goals and limitations.
Misaligned portfolio roadmaps are known to lead teams and projects into failure!
Building an up-to-date portfolio roadmap that aligns business objectives to IT objectives will increase approval and help the business see the long-term value of roadmapping.
Broad or unclear definitions of “application” can complicate the scope of rationalization. Take the time to define an application and come to a common understanding of the systems which will be the focus of your rationalization effort.
Bundling systems under common banner or taking a product view of your applications and components can be an effective way to ensure you include your full collection of systems, without having to perform too many individual assessments.
Single... | Capability enabled by... | Whole... | |
---|---|---|---|
Digital Product + Service | Digital Platform | Platform Portfolio | Customer Facing |
Product (one or more apps) | Product Family | Product Portfolio |
↕ |
Application | Application Architecture | Application Portfolio | Internal |
However you organize your tech stack, Info-Tech’s application rationalization framework can be applied.
There are many lenses to view your applications. Rationalize your applications using all perspectives to assess your portfolio and determine the most beneficial course of action.
How well does the entire portfolio align to your business capabilities?
Are there overlaps or redundancies in your application features?
Covered in Discover Your Applications.
Is the application producing sufficient business value?
Does it impact profitability, enable capabilities, or add any critical factor that fulfills the mission and vision?
What is the overall cost of the application?
What is the projected cost as your organization grows? What is the cost to maintain the application?
How does the end user perceive the application?
What is the user experience?
Do the features adequately support the intended functions?
Is the application important or does it have high utilization?
What is the state of the backend of the application?
Has the application maintained sufficient code quality? Is the application reliable? How does it fit into your application architecture?
Ideally, the richer the data the better the results, but the reality is in-depth analysis is challenging and you’ll need to play to your strengths to be successful.
Light-Weight Assessment |
App to capability alignment. Determine overlaps. |
Subjective 1-10 scale |
Subjective T-shirt size (high, med., low) |
End-user surveys |
Performance temperature check |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Thorough Analysis |
App to process alignment. Determine redundancies. |
Apply a value measurement framework. |
Projected TCO with traceability to ALM & financial records. |
Custom build interviews with multiple end users |
Tool and metric-based analysis |
There is no one-size-fits all rationalization. The primary goal of this blueprint is to help you determine the appropriate level of analysis given your motivations and goals for this effort as well as the limitations of resources, timeline, and accessible information.
The approach in this blueprint has been designed in coordination with Info-Tech’s Application Portfolio Assessment (APA) Diagnostic. While it is not a prerequisite, your project will experience the best results and be completed much quicker by taking advantage of our diagnostic offering prior to initiating the activities in this blueprint.
At the center of this project is an Application Rationalization Tool that is used as a living document of your:
1. Customizable Application Rationalization Framework
2. Recommendation Dispositions
3. Application Portfolio Roadmap (seen below)
Use the step-by-step advice within this blueprint to rationalize your application portfolio and build a realistic and accurate application roadmap that drives business value.
Info-Tech uses the APQC and COBIT5 frameworks for certain areas of this research. Contextualizing application rationalization within these frameworks clarifies its importance and role and ensures that our assessment tool is focused on key priority areas. The APQC and COBIT5 frameworks are used as a starting point for assessing application effectiveness within specific business capabilities of the different components of application rationalization.
APQC is one of the world's leading proponents of business benchmarking, best practices, and knowledge management research.
COBIT 5 is the leading framework for the governance and management of enterprise IT.
In addition to industry-leading frameworks, our best-practice approach is enhanced by the insights and guidance from our analysts, industry experts, and our clients.
Our peer network of over 33,000 happy clients proves the effectiveness of our research.
Our team conducts 1,000+ hours of primary and secondary research to ensure that our approach is enhanced by best practices.
Source: Info-Tech Research Group