Application Portfolio Management

The challenge

• The chances are that you, too, have too many or far too many applications in your organization. You will not be alone. Almost 60% of companies report the same issue. 
• That is due to poorly managed portfolios.
• Your application managers now need to support too many non-critical applications, and they spend insufficient time on the vital applications.
• You can rarely find the required pieces to rationalize your portfolio in one place. You will need to find the resources and build a team.
• The lack of standard practices to define the value that each application in a portfolio provides to the company causes misalignments.

Our advice

Insight

• There is no silver bullet solution. Going too rigid in your approach causes delays in value realization through application portfolio management. It may even prevent this altogether. Define flexible inputs to your portfolio and align closely with your business goals.

Impact and results 

• Define the outputs of your application rationalization effort, with clear roles and responsibilities.
• Tailor the application rationalization framework (ARF) to your company's motivations, goals, and limitations.
• Apply various application assessments to build a clear picture of your portfolio.
• Build an application portfolio roadmap that shows your target state based on your rationalization decisions.

The roadmap

Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:

Get started

Our concise executive brief shows you why you should rationalize your application portfolio using a tailored framework for your company. We'll show you our methodology and the ways we can help you in handling this.

• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Executive Brief (ppt)
• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Phases 1-4 (ppt)

Lay the foundations

Define why you want to rationalize your application portfolio. Define the end state and scope. Build your action plan.

• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Phase 1: Lay Your Foundations (ppt)
• Application Rationalization Tool (xls)

Plan the application rationalization framework

Understand what the core assessments are that you perform in these rationalizations. Define your framework and how rigorous you want to apply the reviews based on your business context.

• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Phase 2: Plan Your Application Rationalization Framework (ppt)

Test and adapt your application rationalization framework (ARF)

Our tool allows you to test the elements of your ARF. Then do a retrospective and adapt based on your experience and desired outcomes. 

• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Phase 3: Test and Adapt Your Application Rationalization Framework (ppt)
• Application TCO Calculator (xls)
• Value Calculator (xls)

Initiate your roadmap

Review your dispositions to ensure they align with your goals. 

• Build an Application Rationalization Framework – Phase 4: Initiate Your Roadmap (ppt)
• Disposition Prioritization Tool (xls)