Core architecture practice

Decide Which Applications to Keep, Change, or Retire

Application rationalization is a decision about each application, made with evidence, followed by work that actually happens. Most efforts manage the first part and lose the second.

Useful EA supports application rationalization: the evidence behind each decision, the decision itself, and the dated work that follows.

The Problem

A Spreadsheet of Recommendations Is Where Rationalization Usually Stops

A typical rationalization exercise ends with a spreadsheet: every application, a colored recommendation, perhaps a cost column. It is presented, approved in principle, and filed. A year later most of the applications marked for retirement are still running.

The decisions were often weaker than they looked. Overlap was judged by application name instead of by the business capabilities each application supports. Dependencies were discovered only when someone tried to switch something off. And the recommendation never turned into scheduled work with an owner and a date.

The Method

Evidence, Decision, Then Work

Rationalization is not a one-time event. The method below works for a first assessment and for the periodic reviews that keep a portfolio from drifting back.

  1. Establish the inventory and its owners

    List the applications in scope with owners and contacts, and have the people who run each department confirm what is theirs.

  2. Map applications to the capabilities they support

    Several applications supporting the same capability are candidates for consolidation. An application supporting no capability needs an explanation.

  3. Assess cost and fit

    Record what each application costs and how well its features fit what the organization needs, so the most misspent money stands out.

  4. Understand dependencies before deciding

    See which applications feed each candidate and which it feeds. A retirement that breaks three downstream systems is a different decision.

  5. Decide and record the reason

    Choose to retain, modernize, consolidate, replace, or retire each candidate, and record why, so the decision can be explained and revisited.

  6. Turn each decision into dated work

    Schedule the work the change requires, from notifying data-flow partners to decommissioning, against a target date, with someone responsible for each item.

Decisions It Supports

The Questions Rationalization Should Answer

  • Which applications to retain, modernize, consolidate, replace, or retire
  • Where several applications support the same capability
  • Where the organization spends the most for the poorest fit
  • What else is affected if a particular application is retired
  • When the work must start to meet a retirement or replacement date
  • Which departments are due for a fresh review of their applications
How Useful EA Helps

Application Portfolio Manager, Anchored to Your Capability Map

Application Portfolio Manager holds the applications, evidence, and work. Capability Modeler holds the capability map the applications link to.

Evidence, decision, and work

Application Portfolio Manager

  • Link each application to every capability it supports in your Capability Modeler map, and filter the portfolio by capability group to see overlap.
  • Record each application’s annual cost and its fitness, from inadequate to far more than needed.
  • The Target Report ranks applications by cost multiplied by fitness mismatch, and lets you mark targets for retirement or replacement, with notes.
  • View each application’s upstream and downstream data flows, or the full network.
  • Set a disposition (Planned, Pilot, Active, Sunset, or Retired) and schedule its configurable checklist as a workback plan on a shared worklist. Record a rationalization decision such as consolidate in a custom field if you want to report on it.
  • With a Corporate plan, Review Campaigns ask each department’s contacts to confirm ownership and recommend keeping, replacing, or removing their applications; nothing changes until you approve it.
About Application Portfolio Manager →
The capability map behind the decision

Capability Modeler

  • Build or import the business capability map, up to five levels deep.
  • Score current and desired maturity and link capabilities to strategy, so you know which capabilities matter most before consolidating the applications that support them.
  • Export the map as editable PowerPoint to show stakeholders where the overlap is.
About Capability Modeler →

The Useful EA tools are separate applications that share one sign-in and one subscription. They do not exchange data automatically, with one exception: Application Portfolio Manager can link each application to capabilities in a model you build in Capability Modeler. Every tool exports its data, so you can carry findings from one into another yourself.

Capability Modeler canvas showing a populated business capability model, organized into labeled groups such as Brand Management, Sales Strategy & Planning, and Enterprise Risk Management, with maturity heatmap coloring and priority badges on individual capabilities.
A real Capability Modeler canvas with maturity heatmap coloring and priority badges, using synthetic data.
Product Boundary

What Useful EA Does Not Do

Useful EA structures the evidence and tracks the work. It does not make the decision for you, and it does not provide:

  • Automated discovery of applications on your network
  • Software license or contract management
  • Usage telemetry or monitoring
  • Automated total-cost-of-ownership calculation
  • Automated rationalization recommendations
  • Decommissioning or data-migration tooling

The Target Report ranks candidates; you and your stakeholders decide. Applications can be read from ServiceNow or Vertice when those systems are your system of record.

Make the Decision Stick

Start with the inventory and the capability map, and finish with dated work. Every plan starts with a 30-day free trial.

Explore Application Portfolio Manager → See Pricing and the Free Trial