Application Rationalization

An Outcome Driven EA Playbook

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Challenges
Why Rationalize Applications?

Lack of Agility Costs too high Supporting the

● Most companies have limited
visibility on IT assets.
Applications are often spread-out
into many Excel sheets
● Investment decisions are
complicated if you don’t know
what’s already available in house
● You need to know what will be
impacted when adding or
deprecating applications
● Redundant applications cost
money
● Many applications aren’t used,
or many licenses are unused
business
● Some business capabilities are
supported by very manual
and convoluted processes,
which triggers high risk and
low traceability
● Many applications don’t meet
user expectations

2
Methodology
How do I get it done?
1 2
Inventory applications
● Inventory applications, lifecycles,
exchanges, technologies and
capabilities
● Group applications into portfolios to
structure the repository
● Assign clear ownership and set-up a
workflow to control additions /
removals
● Publish the inventory on the
intranet with the EA Portal
3
Evaluate applications
● Identify gaps and
redundancies through a
capability map
● Evaluate costs per application,
based several cost lines
● Assess applications through
questionnaires & Generate the
TIME report to support
investment decisions
3
Run transformation projects
● Prepare decommissioning plan
● Run impact analysis in 2D and
3D to identify the impact of
change
● Manage projects to ensure
consistent transformation
Step 1
Inventory applications
APPLICATION INVENTORY

1 Import the list of applications via MEGA ready

to use Excel import templates to make the
repository actionable in few weeks.

Inventory applications

UNLIMITED ACCESS TO THE PUBLISHED

● Inventory applications, lifecycles,
INVENTORY WITH THE EA PORTAL
exchanges, technologies and
capabilities
● Group applications into portfolios to
structure the repository
● Assign clear ownership and set-up a Share the information and make it available
workflow to control additions / to all the stakeholders within the
removals organization. This visibility will the best
insurance for owners that information will be
● Publish the inventory on the
kept up to date.
intranet with the EA Portal

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Step 2.1
Identify gaps & redundancies

CAPABILITY MAP WITH OVERLAYS

2
Evaluate applications

● Identify gaps and

redundancies through a
capability map
● Evaluate costs per application,
based several cost lines
● Assess applications through
questionnaires and generate
the TIME report to support - Identify capabilities without any supporting application
investment decisions - Identify redundant applications
- Analyze impacts of application assessments on business
capabilities

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Step 2.2
Evaluate costs
COSTS PER COST LINE

2 For each application portfolio,

- Define cost lines (licenses, maintenance,
infrastructure, manpower…)
- Run cost consolidation per cost line for each
portfolio
Evaluate applications

COST CONSOLIDATION TREE MAP

● Identify gaps and
redundancies through a
capability map
● Evaluate costs per application,
based several cost lines
● Assess applications through
questionnaires and generate the Run cost consolidation per business
TIME report to support capability on a multi-criteria tree map
investment decisions

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Step 2.3
Questionnaire assessment & TIME report
SURVEY MONITORING DASHBOARD

2
Run assessment campaigns with application
owners based on configurable criteria (ex:
business value, technical risk, user
satisfaction…), and monitor progress
through dashboards

Evaluate applications
TIME REPORT

● Identify gaps and

redundancies through a
capability map
● Evaluate costs per application,
based several cost lines
● Assess applications through
questionnaires & Generate the
TIME report to support Identify which application to Tolerate,
investment decisions Invest on, Maintain, or Eliminate

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Step 3.1
Prepare decommissioning plan

DECOMMISSIONING PLAN

3 Plan for application decommission per

quarter, and generate plan per
business capabilities

Run transformation projects

● Prepare decommissioning plan TIMED BUSINESS CAPABILITY MAP

● Run impact analysis in 2D and
3D to identify the impact of
change
● Manage projects to ensure
consistent transformation Switch views to visualize the plan
graphically on the capability map

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Step 3.2
Identify impact of change
ENVIRONMENT REPORT DENDROGRAM

3
Run transformation projects

● Prepare decommissioning plan

● Run impact analysis in 2D and
3D to identify the impact of
change
● Manage projects to ensure
consistent transformation
Run auto-generated reports, in 2D or 3D, to show
- inter-dependencies between applications
- dependencies to technologies
- impacts on the business

A variety of other reports is later described,

to visualize impacts and dependencies in
multiple ways

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 Step 3.3
Manage projects

PROJECT MONITORING DASHBOARD

3 - Run projects to add, change or

decommission applications
- Monitor projects statuses and
dependencies

Run transformation projects

● Prepare decommissioning plan ASSESS IMPACTS ON CAPABILITIES

● Run impact analysis in 2D and
3D to identify the impact of
change
- Populate project deliverables
● Manage projects to ensure - Assess consistency and impact on
consistent transformation business capabilities

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 Key reports

APPLICATION INVENTORY CAPABILITY MAP WITH OVERLAYS EA PORTAL

Provide a single source of truth for Show how applications support your business Publish the information on a license free
applications capabilities and display impact of portal to show results to all EA stakeholders
assessments

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Applications • Business capabilities • Applications
• Available fields • Applications • Any required data to be published
• Application assessments

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 Key reports

COST PER COST LINE COST CONSOLIDATION TREE MAP EA PORTAL

Consolidate application costs per cost line at Consolidate costs per business capability Compare transformation scenarios with
portfolio level multiple criteria

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Applications • Business capabilities • Portfolio
• Portfolios • Applications • Scenarios & initiatives
• Cost lines • Costs per application & cost line • Evaluation criteria
• Costs per application and cost line

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 Key reports

CAMPAIGN MONITORING
TIME REPORT DECOMMISSIONING PLAN
DASHBOARD

Follow-up the progress of assessment Identify applications to Tolerate, Invest on, Communicate the application
campaigns through dashboards Maintain and Eliminate thanks to evaluation decommissioning plan for the next 5 years,
results with associated cost savings, per capability

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Campaigns in progress, with campaign • Applications • Business Capabilities
content (questionnaires, respondents, • Evaluations • Applications
assessed objects…) • Lifecycles
• Application costs

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 Key reports

APPLICATION ENVIRONMENT
TIMED CAPABILITY MAP DENDROGRAM
REPORT

Identify retired VS in-production applications Automatically visualize exchanges between Automatically visualize impacts and
per business capability and per year, to ensure applications, and with other objects dependencies between objects of the
strong business support over the years repository

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Business capabilities • Applications • Applications
• Applications • Exchanges • Configurable items to measure impacts
• Lifecycles • Optionally other objects

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 Key reports

360° MATRIX MATRIX PROJECT ROADMAP

Analyze connection between application and View how applications support business Monitor projects by portfolio, including
their dependencies for each portfolio processes through a matrix. Matrices can be dependencies and status
configured by users to display any connection

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Application Portfolios • Applications • Project portfolio
• Applications • Business processes • Projects
• Technologies • (Any other connection) • Project lifecycle
• Business lines • Project dependencies
• servers

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 Key reports

PROJECT DELIVERABLE IMPACT ON

PROJECT DASHBOARD PROJECT KPIS
CAPABILITY MAP

Ensure consistency of projects by comparing Monitor projects’ assessments, costs, benefits Monitor budget, costs, ROI, forecast cost
their impacts on the capability map and ROIs through a single table on each variance and actual cost variance per project
portfolio portfolio

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Project portfolios • Project portfolios • Project portfolios
• Projects • Projects • Projects
• Project deliverables • Project assessment • Project progress rate and delay
• Business capability map • Project cost • Project cost forecast
• Project benefit • Project cost actual
• Project ROI • Project ROI
• Project risks and assessments

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 Key reports

APPLICATION EVOLUTION
PROJECT PORTFOLIO RISK HEATMAP APPLICATIONS PER CAPABILITY
DASHBOARD

Monitor project risks at portfolio level Anticipate application costs by monitoring Provide an overview of the capabilities that
newly created and retired applications per consume the larger amount of applications,
year to obtain indicators of potential gaps and
redundancies

Required data: Required data Required data:

• Project portfolios • Applications • Business capabilities
• Projects • Lifecycles • Applications
• Project risks
• Risk assessments

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 Sources & Targets
Where can you find the data in your organization? Who are the reports for?
Hopex ITPM web interface
Enterprise & Business (excel import for initialization)

Architects
API integration

Application Owners Business

Capability
Procurement Map

IT Operations &
Support
Applications

EA Portal

CIO/CTO Single source

of truth Portfolio
Manager

Certified list
Snow of application
Software
Available
applications Updated list of
systems and CRO
owners

Apptio

Service
Now
IT Architect Helpdesk

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 Tips and Tricks
Set up an easy workflow

● Setting up a workflow in HOPEX for application approval allows your organization to

better control application requests and obtain a clear picture of the application
landscape at all points of time. “If it isn’t in HOPEX, it doesn’t exist”
● To avoid slowing down operations, the workflow should be simple enough. We
suggest to limit the levels of approval to 2 approvals.

Application approval workflow - example

Application owner Portfolio Manager CIO

Approve
Submit Approve-1

Approved

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 Tips & Tricks
Ensure Ownership through portfolios

● Use portfolios to categorize applications and ensure ownership

● Sub portfolios can be used to manage high amounts of data

Portfolio (ex: Finance, HR, Sales, Digital)

Sub Portfolio (ex: Payroll, Communication, Staffing…)

Application (Billing, EA Tool, Call Management…)

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 Tips & Tricks
Use MEGA's Excel template to import existing data

● MEGA’s ITPM Excel template allows you to import all the data you need to
populate your HOPEX inventory and generate your reports.
● The ITPM import template is available on the HOPEX Store:
https://community.mega.com/t5/HOPEX-Store/bd-p/hopex-store

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 US Bank
IT Rationalization / IT Strategic
Planning
● Objectives
● Gain better insight into the interdependencies of
applications and technologies
● Identify unutilized, redundant or non-compliant
applications
● Develop strategies for the modernization of their
systems
● Meet the demands of a growing company with a
bigger focus on digital transformation

● Results
“The EA group is an influencer of strategic planning and
HOPEX provided us with the ultimate visibility required
to have a holistic understanding of ecosystems, data,
and interdependencies across the business
units. Through visualizations and dashboards, business
managers are empowered to translate data into
action. And, as a trusted advisor to the business units,
our EA team has a seat at the table to influence
strategic initiatives.”
- Financial Services Company Senior Manager,
Enterprise Architecture
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● Created a complete view of organization’s
EA by rationalizing data and applications, thereby
identifying and realizing downstream cost savings
● Created consistency and structured work
projects that helped standardize documentation and
increase output of digital documentation
● Moved from an EA “push” mode to a business
“pull mode” that successfully communicated the
value of EA output across business units
● Enabled faster and more streamlined planning
by using HOPEX data as a single source of truth for
application inventory
 Return on Investment 302%

Total Economic Impact

CUSTOMER OVERVIEW
Operational
risk reduction ● One of the largest financial
services providers in the world
$3.2 million
Incremental in benefits Retirement of ● Revenue: more than $65 billion
application legacy tools
consolidation ● 65,000+ employees
More than $429,000
$9 million maintenance
in benefits Increased cost savings CASE STUDY
productivity for IT
Project activities
● A large financial service provider
$380,000 ● Increase transparency
External in benefits Improved
consultancy data collection ● Build a single, consolidated,
cost savings
managed IT portfolio
$857,000 Savings of
in savings
● Reduce IT asset costs and risks
$693,000

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 IT Transformation journey
What’s next?

IT Strategic Planning IT Transformation Governance

TRANSFORM
Agile Solution Complex Systems
Cloud Migration
Architecture Architecture

IT Policy &
SECURE
Resiliency Data Glossary Data
Regulatory
Architecture Management Compliance
Compliance
RATIONALIZE

Application Rationalization Technology Standards & Obsolescence

EA
EA BASELINE
BASELINE
Horizontal inventory,
Application Impact
& Technology analysis,
Inventory, Communication
Capability Mapping
& Enterprise Portal

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