Application Portfolio

The Application Portfolio is used primarily as part of Service Strategy, but is referenced here for completeness. The Application Portfolio is a list (more accurately a system or database) of all applications in use within the organization, together with the following information:

Key attributes of the application

• Customers and users
• Business purpose
• Level of business criticality
• Architecture (included the IT Infrastructure dependencies)
• Developers, support groups, suppliers or vendors
• The investment made in the application to date. In this respect the Application Portfolio can be used as an asset register for applications,

The purpose of the Application Portfolio is to analyse the need for and use of applications in the organization. It can be used to link functionality and investment to business activity and is therefore an important part of ongoing IT planning and control. Another benefit of the Application Portfolio is that it can be used to identify duplication and excessive licensing of applications.

The Application Portfolio forms part of the overall IT service Portfolio, which is discussed in detail in the Service Strategy publication.

The Application Portfolio and theService Catalogue

The Application Portfolio should not be mistaken for the Service Catalogue and should not be advertised as a list of services to customers or users. Applications are one of the components used to provide IT services, usually not the service itself.

The Application Portfolio should therefore be used as a planning document only by those managers and staff who are involved with the development and management of the organization’s IT Strategy, as well as IT staff who are tasked with managing the applications or the platforms on which the applications run.

The Service Catalogue should focus on listing the services that are available, rather than simply listing applications and assuming that users and customers can make the link. Having said that, there are times when the application is synonymous with the service, e.g. word-processing applications are typically known by their name; an application hosting service will mention the names of the application hosted, etc.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 1089