Download Planview Enterprise for Application Portfolio Management

PLANVIEW APPROACH TO
APPLICATION PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
Companies have been accumulating applications for more than 30 years. Driven by growth
through mergers and acquisitions and the need to support an ever-changing set of business
requirements, IT organizations have become the stewards of large and complex application
environments. According to top industry analysts, costs to maintain corporate applications
have skyrocketed and are consuming the IT budget. The overwhelming recommendation is
that organizations need to become more agile by gaining better control over their business
applications, and develop a strategic plan for the ongoing optimization of their application
portfolio or risk financial loss.
Application portfolio management (APM) provides enterprise-wide visibility into the landscape
of applications that run your business. It is an ongoing process that enables IT to work with the
business to make intelligent decisions about investments and activities around the applications
portfolio to focus on the areas of greatest opportunity.
Successful APM initiatives require access to information at every stage of the process to
effectively evaluate each application’s use, function, value, and risk across multiple years. APM
software helps IT establish an ongoing evaluation process and application roadmap, providing
Application Portfolio Management
transparency into the current and future state of the application portfolio while aligning
business strategy with technology investments. Commitment to APM excellence enables IT
organizations to finally shift the balance of budget spend from “keep the lights on” operational and maintenance activities to more strategic projects
that drive innovation for the business.
Inventory the Applications
Inventory
As a first step, you need to start at the ground level and collect information about the applications you currently own.
However, more often than not, there is detailed information to collect. You need to think about who is using each
application? Determine its function? And answer: what it costs to maintain it?
Consider an APM solution that allows for automated information gathering during the application inventory process.
It simplifies data collection and allows you to classify applications according the business process it serves helping you determine total cost of
ownership, risk, technical worth, enhancement potential, and overall business value—the basis for application portfolio assessment and the start of
an application governance framework. Because each application has its own set of characteristics evolving at different rates, you need to have the
ability to categorize them in a series of layers.
Look for a solution that supports a recognized framework, such as Gartner’s Pace-Layered Application Strategy: Governance and Change
Management report.1 An effective APM solution will support pace-layers and help drive effective use of application resources.
The different layers include:
• Systems of Record — categorize core data and legacy applications. These typically have a low rate change and are well-established in the
organization’s infrastructure
• Systems of Differentiation — categorize applications with specific company processes or industry capabilities. They have a medium lifecycle
(one to three years), but need to be reconfigured frequently to accommodate changing business practices and customer requirements
• Systems of Innovation — categorize new applications built on an ad-hoc basis to address new business requirements or opportunities. These
are typically projects with a short life cycle (zero to 12 months) that use departmental or outside resources and consumer-grade technologies.
Establishing such a strategy will help to properly segment your applications and gain a true understanding of the current state of your application
inventory.
Assess the Application Portfolio with the Business
Assess
Once your inventory is created and segmented, you need to assess your application portfolio with the rest of the
business; this is not always an easy task. How do you get your colleagues in the business to sponsor and engage in
the process?
An effective APM solution not only automates the application inventory process but also allows the business and
IT to work together in unison to determine which applications to keep, decommission, or modernize. Look for a solution that incorporates built-in
collaboration functionality that lets analysts initiate interviews using pre-populated questions and answers for group data collection and evaluation
for continuous communication. When business leaders understand how applications support necessary business functions, conversations shift from
blaming IT for excessive costs toward examining how to best use resources to support corporate priorities.
1
Swanton, Bill. (2011). “Pace-Layered Application Strategy for Governance and Change Management.” Gartner.
Roadmap the Plan for Change
Application
Inventory
Roadmap
With an application inventory and fact-based discussions in progress, IT can draw conclusions based on the
feedback from the business and make informed decisions about how to proceed. Change is not easily affected and
decisions made to retire, modernize, and consolidate will not be implemented overnight. Therefore, it is critical for
IT to clearly articulate to the business the roadmap of activities, dates, and milestones that will implement these
changes over time.
A complete APM solution will synthesize the information gathered in the previous steps and combine metrics to help you incrementally plan the
application roadmap. The roadmap will provide the technical and procedural requirements needed to modernize the applications aligning the plan
with your project portfolios to ensure the applications and assets support your service-delivery framework.
Project Portfolios
Application
Project
Inventory
Roadmap
Portfolios
Put your decisions into action. An effective APM solution allows you to execute on the roadmap. You need to be
able to create and assign projects to the application and/or the application portfolio and allocate labor and nonlabor resources to get the work done. Look for a solution that will help you track and optimize each decision from
concept to execution and ongoing maintenance, while continuously communicating with the business.
Communicate in Business Terms with Analytics and Reporting
At the heart of a good APM solution is the reporting it provides. To make informed business
decisions you need instant access to real-time metrics and dashboards. A complete solution
will support user-defined dashboards and allow you to import data from other systems.
Look for a solution that will help you decide which applications to keep, enhance, innovate,
integrate, migrate, or retire, such as one that supports the Gartner-defined TIME (Tolerate,
Invest, Migrate, Eliminate) Model.2
The key to a sustaining APM program is the ability to communicate
the status of the application portfolio on a regular basis and in terms
that are readily understood by business users. Scorecards and key
performance indicators ( KPIs) that clearly illustrate essential aspects
such as portfolio growth, risk, cost, and complexity are central to the
decision-making process and will ensure that your APM program
becomes part of the fabric of your IT organization.
2
Duggan, Jim. (2010), “Application Portfolio Triage: TIME for APM.” Gartner
In today’s business environment, IT portfolios need to provide accurate, point-in-time information to
help stakeholders understand the current state of IT. Managers need processes and technology that
enables them to efficiently communicate to the business about how the project portfolio intersects with the
application portfolio. Now that you know what to look for in an APM solution, analyze the different vendors in
the market and find the right partner for your organization.
Planview has been building this type of technology for more than 20 years and for hundreds of enterprise customers. Our tenure in the market
helps us deliver the systems you need to establish a continuous application evaluation process and roadmap while providing transparency into the
current and future state of the application portfolio – connecting business strategy with technology investments.
Ready to learn what we can do for you? Visit Planview.com/APM today.
WWW.PLANVIEW.COM | [email protected] | 800.856.8600 | +1.512.346.8600 |
©2013 Planview, Inc. All rights reserved. All trademarks acknowledged.
PA002