Page 38 - DCAP205_DCAP409_ANALYSIS_AND_DESIGN_OF_INFORMATION_SYSTEMS

Analysis & Design of Information Systems

Notes 2.1 Managing the Application Development Portfolio

In today’s Information Technology (I/T) world, how many organizations have a formal procedure
for evaluating already organized applications, their influence on the business, and I/T’s aptitude
to deliver? Each IT organization should have Application approaches that provide value, where:
Value = Benefits/Cost.
Costs can be reduced by dropping or eliminating low value work, decreasing cycle time, and
diminishing defects.
Advantages can be maximized if we function on the right things, provide excellence applications,
and are receptive to altering business requirements.
One of the main confronts is that of bringing some stage of objectivity to the mission of choosing
which business application systems to restore, improve, minimally sustain or just scrap. This
matter of “functioning on the correct things” is not often easy and inside IT the recognition of
those “correct things” is frequently complexed by verbal proponents and the pressing
requirement to “get the job completed” which is apt to unclear the actuality that what is
“getting done” isn’t “getting done” wonderfully.
Here we concentrate on a technique known as Application Portfolio Management (APM).
Managing application development portfolio is used to make sure you are functioning on the
correct things. Similar to your stock investment portfolio, applications require to be handled.
Some applications may require to be retired (sell), some may necessitate new investment (buy),
whereas others should be simply preserved (hold).
By means of APM, one company was competent to decrease their preservation/enhancement
workload by 25% by removing low value work. In an additional case, an IT executive exposed
that an application he considered had been very productively deployed, was no longer being
utilized by its customers as it failed to provide value to its consumers.

Application Portfolio Management is the procedure consumers and IT utilize to maintain the
portfolio data current and to formulate investment conclusions.
IT employees and its consumers use each application by means of three different measures.
How an application scores comparative to the other applications in the application portfolio
assist direct investment decisions.
The three measures utilized to evaluate each application are:
Technical Quality – The application is assessed against factors like maintainability, constancy,
and effectual utilization of technology. This assessment is executed in facilitated meetings with
the staff that assists applications.
Functional Quality –This is a concern of how well the application fulfills the requirements of
the business. Factors comprise system usefulness, user-friendliness, reliability, and receptiveness
to variations to the business. This concern is determined in a facilitated review with the operational
consumers of the system and supervisors/executives who access the system for administration
or strategic decision-making.

Strategic Value – This computes the relative significance of a business function to the company
and how vital the application is in executing that function. The ratings (High, Medium, or Low)
are allocated by company executives. A High specifies that the function and application
provide the company a competitive advantage. A Low implies that the application is not vital
to the business.

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