Building an IT Applications inventory - return on experience

Why inventory of IT applications is business critical?IT applications contribute to the support of business processes or to the support other applications, thanks to the execution of IT Software. Directly or indirectly, IT applications have one main purpose; supporting the business in the most efficient way. They can be considered as an enterprise’s asset.

Either custom developed, or packaged, IT applications represent a cost; licenses, maintenance, customization, development, running fees etc…

In a large organization, due to reorganization, acquisitions or lack of coordination, it is hard to keep track of which business processes are supported by which applications.

A trusted IT applications inventory united with process descriptions is the necessary foundation to answer the following questions with fact-grounded confidence:

What are the applications which support the most critical processes and which require attention and investment?

Are there applications which are barely or not used and for which recurring fees occur?

Is it possible to reduce costs by using one application instead of many applications for the same business purpose?

By virtue of the dependencies between applications, is business continuity at risk in case of IT failure?

Information quality is keyAn outdated list of applications or many disparate sources of information about IT applications cannot be used as a solid reference; no business decisions can be taken on their basis. That’s why an inventory of applications needs to be maintained centrally.

Moreover, in order to allow the level of analysis required to answer business related questions, it is necessary to link the applications to business processes representations; a repository is required.

An applications repository reaches an optimal level of quality when all necessary information is collected and signed-off.

There are two main type of information that need to be recorded:

Attributes

They store the properties of applications, like unique enterprise wide Identifier, Name, Description, Responsibilities, Support responsibilities, assessment of Criticality which can be in the form of a tiered classification, current Operational status, indication of update strategy, number of users etc…

Relationships

Using a repository which integrates a database allows the documentation of relationships between applications and other representations. Relations allow impact analysis queries between Applications and the software products they use, the vendor providing them, the main functionalities they support, and eventually the processes they support.

It is recommended to put in place a quality assurance mechanism that assesses the quality of application documentation for completeness of required attributes (semantic quality) and existence of relationships (syntactic quality). It should also include an assessment the validity of the recorded information.

A pass score can be established to determine which applications descriptions are ready for sign-off and promotion to the library.

Building the applications architecture is a process.Building an applications inventory is a process that transforms a heterogeneous, redundant and uncontrolled list of applications into a controlled catalogue placed under the responsibility of the subject matters experts.

In order to reach the level of information quality required to allow trustworthy reference and reporting it is necessary to ensure that each application is identified, documented and signed off by the persons in charge of them within the enterprise.

Application inventory, constituted by the applications, their attributes and relations to other objects, is structured content stored into a database. Yet, It is important to make sure that initial unstructured, incomplete or approximate content may be taken into account as an initial input.

A modelling tool that allows collaboration and sharing of application architecture views can be used during discovery phases. Eventually, created application architecture views constitute the graphical communication of the application inventory content stored into the database.

Once signed-off an application is ready to be placed under architecture control. It is promoted to a library. The library contains validated content and is presented strictly according to conventions. The content of the library is the trusted reference.

Write access to the library is strictly controlled to prevent accidental or uncontrolled modification of the applications library.

Last recommendationsDeliver services

It is important to stay focused on the business needs. When possible, adopt an agile approach to allow rapid implementation and rapid adjustments to users and stake-holders specific needs. Try to address immediate needs as much as possible, like the production of reports to illustrate dependencies between applications supporting a specific process.

Facilitate learning

Allow a smooth and progressive adoption of the application inventory building process (it’s a group learning exercise). Keep it easy; develop simple conventions, create a project space where creativity is allowed and mistakes have no consequences, when collecting input from subject matter experts, privilege focus on content instead of focus on layout or presentation. When possible make the most of available collaborative software that allows easy screen sharing and collaboration across the enterprise.

Enforce reference material

Applications inventory has to become referential, communicated, understood and used across the enterprise. It can then be used with confidence for business analysis, planning, design of future solutions.

To allow comparison and optimisation, when possible, describe applications with mapping relations to readily available enterprise wide reference material like a common Application domains model.

Unite with business processes

Applications support Business processes: It’s a good way to track applications’ fitness for business purpose.

Frederick Halas is a Senior Consultant at Leonardo Consulting (www.leonardo.com.au). Frederick joined Leonardo consulting after more than 15 years’ experience in software development, related methodologies and enterprise architecture capability development. He can be contacted at f.halas@leonardo.com.au.