Application Portfolio Assessment in 30 Questions You Need to Answer

A structured application portfolio is a powerful driver for the transformation and innovation of your organization, helping you gain a competitive edge over your rivals.

Streamlining of the application landscape helps to reduce costs and resource requirements across the IT, and therefore simultaneously creates more room for innovation. Minimizing the complexity and, as a result, the overall risk of the portfolio is what in the end drives the transformation of your company. can be done in just a few steps, and the first results can be already achieved with little effort.

Before you start, think of a model against which you would like to validate your applications after the assessment. We suggest Gartner’s® TIME model, a 2×2 quadrant showcasing the different investment strategy possibilities based on the applications’ business and IT fitness. The major milestone here, is defining a set of questions that will help you adequately assess the fitness level of each application.

Not sure which key questions to consider? Then keep on reading this blog post, and leverage our 30 best practice criteria to set your application portfolio up for long-term success!

A core process is a process that brings value to the customer. Think of all your level 1 processes or capabilities of your process/capability map.

Some applications are simply a requirement for common processes, while others are unique in their capabilities and as such can bring something new to the table – thus creating a competitive advantage. What about your applications?

Think of the consequences that a loss/failure of the application would bring to your organization – specifically in terms of confidentiality, availability or integrity.

Is the application important for key users and to which extent?

Consider the degree of fitness between currently supported functionality and your business requirements and process needs. Is there a functional gap you need to cover?

Think of the degree to which functional enhancements have been met in a timely manner, relative to the number of change requests.

Some applications are intuitive and easy to use from day one. Others require (some) training. What’s the case with your application at hand?

Think about the process of getting used to this application. How would your employees, colleagues or you yourself rate the user friendliness of this application? Is the interface layout easy on the eye and is it intuitive enough?

Consider the following aspects: (1) data integrity and trustworthiness, (2) data quality, (3) availability of data to employees or customers at any time.

Think about the level of (manual) intervention you needed to undertake in order to integrate the application across your organization.

Consider the broader environment surrounding the business processes, including the business strategy adjustments, regulatory updates and economic impacts, as well as operational changes.

Does your application contribute to gaining a competitive advantage, or is it simply an application that gets the tasks done?

If training is necessary for using the application – is it provided, and are the available resources sufficient for the successful usage of the application?

Think if other applications depend on certain services or data provided by this application.

Try to gather all the costs for application’s maintenance, remediation, etc. for the past fiscal year.

Consider how business and IT work together to plan, implement, and maintain the application.

Think of the ease with which the integration can be adjusted to reflect the changing business processes; the degree to which data translations, technology adapters and interfaces are hard coded within the application, or abstracted into the integration hubs.

Think about the access control enforcement, privacy issues, regulatory compliance and how those security controls adversely affect user accessibility, usability, productivity and effectiveness.

Are there any solutions for handling the crisis and recovering the data or is the data loss terminal?

Consider the robustness of the application in handling high-transaction volume or congested activity.

Is your application unique and if not, is it more valuable than those applications with which it has overlaps?

Each application is dependent on some technology. Think about the application in question. Is the technology that supports it obsolete?

Think about the exposure that can occur as a result of using the application.

Consider the consequences of upgrading the application at hand. To what extent does the upgrade influence applications that are used simultaneously?

Can you make use of the Cloud technology by using your application?

How many PBs, TBs or GBs of storage does this application require?

Consider whether the application supports the architectural direction of your organization such as Service Oriented Architecture, Business Process Management and Master Data Management.

Are changes made easily or are they difficult and costly? Also consider how well the application handles new requirements.

Does the application maintenance and handling require any additional internal or external personnel costs incurred due to necessary know-how?

Is it at the end-of-life and therefore is losing its business value; at birth and therefore includes formulating the initial business plan; growing and therefore involves improvement and customization or mature and thus is beginning to stabilize its business value?

Once you have evaluated both your business and IT fitness, you can proceed with assigning an for each of them. How? Combine the final scores from both fitness scores and decide if you should:

Applications with low business value, but high technical quality.

Applications with both high business value and high technical quality.

Applications with high business value but low technical quality.

Applications with both low business value and low technical quality.

For more insights on this topic, check out our blog post on how to define a robust Application Portfolio strategy.

Performing regular assessments of your application portfolio is critical for keeping pace with rapidly changing markets and making room for new innovations. By asking yourself the right questions and evaluating your applications based on their business and IT fitness, you can identify their value and quality and ultimately guide your portfolio with the right investment strategy.

Are you interested in evaluating your portfolio to identify weak spots, opportunities and room for improvement? Then you should give our industry-renowned EA suite ADOIT a try and its brand-new User Centric Services, where we offer exactly this and much more.