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5 Steps to Rationalize Your Application Portfolios

  • 5 Steps to Rationalize Your Application Portfolios-

    Capture a Baseline

    Discover and capture a baseline state of capabilities.

    The best place to start is to look at application capabilities relative to the company vision. Record the core applications, platforms, products, processes, risk profiles and costs to capture the "as is" or "baseline" state of existing capabilities relative to future focus areas for all of the different lines of business. Also consider geographies, product lines, and other key factors specific to the organization. Keep in mind that there are different levels of granularity that some companies need to drill down to, depending on the markets for their products/services.

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5 Steps to Rationalize Your Application Portfolios

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  • 5 Steps to Rationalize Your Application Portfolios-2

    Capture a Baseline

    Discover and capture a baseline state of capabilities.

    The best place to start is to look at application capabilities relative to the company vision. Record the core applications, platforms, products, processes, risk profiles and costs to capture the "as is" or "baseline" state of existing capabilities relative to future focus areas for all of the different lines of business. Also consider geographies, product lines, and other key factors specific to the organization. Keep in mind that there are different levels of granularity that some companies need to drill down to, depending on the markets for their products/services.

As organizations evolve, they build context-specific software applications to meet business needs. Over time, the environment for which these applications had been developed to execute business operations changes shape. Shifting business imperatives, mergers and acquisitions, and more often than not, the disconnected operations of different business units create a gap between what the applications were built to do and what the company needs its applications to do today. Organizations are left with a portfolio of applications that are redundant, no longer provide the required business functionality, and are increasingly expensive to maintain.

In the age of the digital economy, when business agility and quick delivery are required to compete effectively, having a rigid and costly application portfolio can become truly detrimental to the business. Company leaders (often CTOs, CIOs or heads of IT) need to conduct an application portfolio rationalization to assess their software platform's capabilities relative to business needs. Rajeev Sharma, chief solutions officer at Ness Software Engineering Services, a company that helps its clients build new digital platforms and modernize existing software solutions, shares his recommendations for the five steps critical to the application portfolio rationalization process.