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Rationalize Your Application Portfolio

Establish an evergreen application portfolio management (APM) program to deliver the best possible return on investment.

When organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor:

  • No dedicated or centralized effort to manage the app portfolio means no single source of truth is available to support informed decision-making.
  • Organizations acquire more applications over time, creating redundancy, waste, and the need for additional support.
  • Organizations are more vulnerable to changing markets. Flexibility and growth are compromised when applications are unadaptable or cannot scale.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

  • You cannot outsource application strategy.
  • Modern software options have lessened the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. But your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require centralized oversight to ensure the best overall return on investment.
  • Application portfolio management is the mechanism to ensure that the applications in your enterprise are delivering value and support for your value streams and business capabilities. Understanding value, satisfaction, technical health, and total cost of ownership are critical to digital transformation, modernization, and roadmaps.

Impact and Result

Build an APM program that is ready for action and fit for size:

  • Understand your current state, needs, and goals for your application portfolio management.
  • Create an application and platform inventory that is built for better decision making.
  • Rationalize your apps with business priorities and communicate risk in operational terms.
  • Create a roadmap that improves communication between those who own, manage, and support your applications.

Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Research & Tools

1. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Deck – A guide that helps you establish your core application inventory, simplified rationalization, redundancy comparison, and modernization roadmap.

Enterprises have more applications than they need and rarely apply oversight to monitor the health, cost, and relative value of applications to ensure efficiency and minimal risk. This blueprint will help you build a streamlined application portfolio management process.

Rationalize Your Application Portfolio – Phases 1-4

2. Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool – A tool that assesses your current application portfolio.

Visibility into your application portfolio and APM practices will help inform and guide your next steps.

Application Portfolio Management Diagnostic Tool

3. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Playbook – A template that builds your application portfolio management playbook.

Capture your APM roles and responsibilities and build a repeatable process.

Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Playbook
Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Workbook

4. Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Tool – A tool that stores application information and allows you to execute rationalization and build a portfolio roadmap.

This tool is the central hub for the activities within Rationalize Your Application Portfolio.

Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Tool
Application Portfolio Management Tool – Example

5. Application TCO Calculator – A tool to help you calculate TCO for applications in your portfolio.

Use this tool to compile the various costs of your applications.

Application TCO Calculator

6. Application Portfolio Assessment: Ask Your Users How They Really Feel Deck – Gauge and assess teammate feedback to refine your understanding of how well their needs are being met, along with actionable steps to drive improvement.

Listening to your users is critical. In this technology keynote session, we’ll explore how Info-Tech's Application Portfolio Assessment diagnostic uncovers end-user sentiment toward your application portfolio and how these insights can inform your decisions to upgrade, maintain, or retire applications.

Learn more in this Info-Tech LIVE 2024 presentation.

Application Portfolio Assessment: Ask Your Users How They Really Feel 2024

7. Application Portfolio Assessment: Ask Your Users How They Really Feel 2025 Keynote

Applications are the lifeblood of your organization. We focus on features and technology, but very little on user sentiment and perception. Understanding your users' perception of your applications can help you make better decisions. Learn about Info-Tech's Application Portfolio Assessment diagnostic and how it can help you drive improved outcomes for your organization.

Application Portfolio Assessment: Ask Your Users How They Really Feel 2025

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.5/10

Overall Impact

$196,906

Average $ Saved

34

Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

La Trobe University

Guided Implementation

8/10

$45,000

35

Easy to talk to both Ricardo and James understood what we need, James was able to connect a few points back to other Aus uni similar challenges/exp... Read More

County Of Rockdale

Guided Implementation

10/10

$51,000

115

The knowledge and expertise the counselor.

Southern Illinois University – Carbondale Office of Information Technology

Guided Implementation

10/10

$13,600

10

The initial call is always sipping from a firehose. We can see that App Rationalization is a significant undertaking and anticipate it will help u... Read More

Goodwill of Central and Northern Arizona

Workshop

8/10

$68,000

N/A

Oregon Public Utility Commission

Workshop

10/10

$2,720

5

Asia is a great facilitator with a wealth of information for my team. We enjoyed working with her during this engagement.

PBI Gordon Companies, Inc

Guided Implementation

10/10

$34,000

10

Orange County Government

Guided Implementation

8/10

$13,600

10

Regional Transportation District

Guided Implementation

9/10

$1.22M

80

Hans plays a crucial role in driving positive change and enhancing IT maturity, delivering tangible results. InfoTech, as a whole, provides excepti... Read More

Northland Power Inc

Guided Implementation

8/10

$100K

20

It was a lot of information in one shot but Kieran was very helpful in clarifying my questions and requests.

Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation

Guided Implementation

10/10

$136K

20

Best: The engagement met 100% of my expectations. My team was able to implement the guidance and learning in real time with the analyst. Worst:... Read More

Carver County, MN

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,584

5

D&I Associates Ltd

Guided Implementation

9/10

$92,499

20

+ve : Very effectively scheduled, call opened on time, quick intros, opportunity to share context, practical advice based on sound models/framework... Read More

Stellenbosch University

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

120

Even though I am new to architecture landscape everyone was very welcoming and I was not intimidated by the content.

Regional Transportation District

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1.22M

110

Expert, friendly and collaborative advice.

University of Ottawa

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

N/A

Too early to estimate savings at this point. Looks really positive. We can fill out a survey at the end of the work.

New Mexico Department Of Health

Guided Implementation

9/10

$1.36M

110

Hans is a wealth of information and a welcome knowledge-asset!

Regional Transportation District

Guided Implementation

10/10

$680K

47

This engagement has helped RTD establish a baseline measure of our Application Portfolio giving us better command over which systems need to be pri... Read More

Amey

Guided Implementation

10/10

$12,949

10

Excellent knowledge and able to put it quickly into the context of our organisation

NH Advisory LLC

Guided Implementation

9/10

$13,600

20

Andrew was very helpful. There is a lot of material to parse through - all positive

Bioventus LLC

Guided Implementation

10/10

$68,000

10

This was a great start to this guided implementation. I look forward to seeing the actual results at the end.

Sundale

Guided Implementation

10/10

$18,450

18

Great session with Ricardo who clearly and expertly unpacked and explained everything I need to know to get to the next stage.

Oregon Department of Justice

Guided Implementation

10/10

$2,740

20

It was great to learn about APM and how it can be utilized. This is something that we will plan to implement in the future. An executive summary... Read More

Community Aid, Inc.

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

N/A

Hong was extremely helpful, pliable and accessible. We greatly appreciate his patience and expertise. Worst part is the rationizations input ta... Read More

North American Air Travel Insurance Agents Ltd.

Guided Implementation

10/10

$90,000

20

Another excellent & insightful meeting with Hans! His App spreadsheet is really helping us uncover a lot of facts about applications are users like... Read More

Braun Intertec Corporation

Guided Implementation

9/10

$2,448

2

Suneel does a great job to help put context around approach and ask good questions to help us shape what it is that would help guide us to get the ... Read More

Noble Corporation

Guided Implementation

9/10

$34,250

5

Alignment and explanation of how I can use the tool to bring value by doing an Application Portfolio Management exercise to the org and more import... Read More

Tri-State Generation and Transmission Assoc.

Guided Implementation

9/10

$130K

20

Washington State Department of Health

Guided Implementation

9/10

N/A

50

Having the discussions about what EA is thinking vs reality. Take that with the methodology of the offering will assist when working within the DOH... Read More

The Corporation of United Counties of Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

20

Australian Institute of Company Directors

Guided Implementation

10/10

$27,300

20

Best part - a proven cost effective framework supported by knowledgeable people

Load More Testimonials

Application Portfolio Management

Support your ongoing business objectives with a rationalized application portfolio while remaining aligned with your current and future technology needs.

This course makes up part of the Applications Certificate.

  • Course Modules: 6
  • Estimated Completion Time: 1 hour

Now Playing:
Academy: Application Portfolio Management | Introduction

An active membership is required to access Info-Tech Academy

Workshop: Rationalize Your Application Portfolio

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Lay Your Foundations

The Purpose

  • Work with key corporate stakeholders to come to a shared understanding of the benefits and aspects of application portfolio management.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Establish the goals of APM.
  • Set the scope of APM responsibilities.
  • Establish business priorities for the application portfolio.

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Assess your current application portfolio

  • An understanding of your current application portfolio
1.2

Determine narrative

  • Current narrative for why we need to rationalize our application portfolio
1.3

Define goals and metrics

  • Set short- and long-term goals and metrics
1.4

Define application categories

  • List of application categories
1.5

Determine steps and roles

  • A list of steps and roles for your rationalization program

Module 2: Improve Your Inventory

The Purpose

  • Gather information on your applications to build a detailed inventory and identify areas of redundancy.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Populated inventory based on your and your team’s current knowledge.
  • Understanding of outstanding data and a plan to collect it.

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Populate inventory

  • Initial application inventory
2.2

Assign to business capabilities

  • Alignment of inventory to business capabilities

Module 3: Rationalize Your Applications

The Purpose

Work with the application subject matter experts to collect and compile data points and determine the appropriate disposition for your apps.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Dispositions for individual applications
  • Application rationalization framework

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Assess business value

  • Business value score for individual applications
3.2

Assess technical health

  • Technical health score for individual applications
3.3

Assess end-user perspective

  • End-user satisfaction score for individual applications
3.4

Assess total cost of ownership

  • Assessed TCO for individual applications

Module 4: Populate Your Roadmap

The Purpose

  • Work with application delivery specialists to determine the strategic plans for your apps and place these in your portfolio roadmap.

Key Benefits Achieved

  • Prioritized initiatives
  • Initial application portfolio roadmap
  • Ongoing structure of APM

Activities

Outputs

4.1

Review APM Snapshot results

  • A clear view of areas to focus on
4.2

Review Rationalization results

  • A view of recommended dispositions and priorities for your applications
4.3

Determine dispositions

  • Confirmed set of dispositions for your applications
4.4

Assess redundancies (optional)

  • Identified set of redundant applications
4.5

Determine dispositions for redundant applications (optional)

  • Dispositions for redundant applications
4.6

Prioritize initiatives

  • Prioritized new potential initiatives
4.7

Determine ongoing cadence

  • Established an ongoing cadence of activities

Rationalize Your Application Portfolio

Establish an evergreen Application Portfolio Management (APM) program to deliver the best possible return on investment.

Analyst Perspective

You can’t outsource accountability.

Many lack visibility into their overall application portfolio, focusing instead on individual projects or application development. Inevitably, application sprawl creates process and data disparities, redundant applications, and duplication of resources, and it stands as a significant barrier to organizational agility and responsiveness. The shift from strategic investment to application maintenance creates an unnecessary constraint on innovation and value delivery.

With the rise and convenience of SaaS solutions, IT has an increasing need to discover and support all applications in the organization. Unmanaged and unsanctioned applications can lead to increased reputational risk. What you don’t know will hurt you.

You can outsource development, you can even outsource maintenance, but you cannot outsource accountability for the portfolio. Organizations need a holistic dashboard of application performance and dispositions to help guide and inform planning and investment discussions. Application portfolio management (APM) can’t tell you why something is broken or how to fix it, but it is an important tool to determine if an application’s value and performance are up to your standards and can help meet your future goals.

Hans Eckman.

Hans Eckman
Principal Research Director
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

Common Obstacles

Info-Tech’s Approach

  • Organizations consider application oversight a low priority and app portfolio knowledge is poor.
  • No dedicated or centralized effort to manage the app portfolio means no single source of truth is available to support informed decision-making.
  • Organizations acquire more applications over time, creating redundancy, waste, and the need for additional support.
  • Organizations are more vulnerable to changing markets. Flexibility and growth are compromised when applications are unadaptable or cannot scale.
  • Decision-making
  • Application portfolio management (APM) implies taking a holistic approach and compiling multiple priorities and perspectives.
  • Organizations have limited time to act strategically or proactively and need to be succinct.
  • Uncertainties about organizational value and fit prevent IT from successfully advising software decision-making.
  • IT knows its technical debt but struggles to get the organization to act on technical risks.
  • Attempts at exposing these problems rarely gain buy-in and discourage the push for improvement.

Leverage APM to drive application rationalization goals:

  • Think “low priority” over “no priority.”
  • Integrate these tasks into your mixed workload.
  • Create an inventory built for better decision-making.
  • Rationalize your apps by organizational priorities and communicate risks on their terms.
  • Create a roadmap that improves communication between those who own, manage, and support an application.
  • Build your APM process fit for size.

Info-Tech Insight: You can’t outsource strategy.
Modern software options have decreased the need for organizations to have robust in-house application management capabilities. Your applications’ future and governance of the portfolio still require centralized IT oversight to ensure the best return on investment.

What is application portfolio management (APM)?

Application Inventory
The artifact that documents and informs the organization of your application portfolio.

Application Rationalization
The process of collecting information and assessing your applications to determine recommended dispositions.

Application Alignment
The process of revealing application information through interviewing stakeholders and aligning to organizational capabilities.

Application Roadmap
The artifact that showcases the strategic directions for your applications over a given timeline.

Application portfolio management:

The ongoing practice of:

  • Providing visibility into applications across the organization
  • Recommending corrections or enhancements to decision makers
  • Aligning delivery teams on priority
  • Showcasing the direction of applications to stakeholders

Is this research right for you?

Research Navigation
Managing your application portfolio is essential regardless of its size or whether your software is purchased or developed in house. Each organization must have some degree of application portfolio management to ensure that applications deliver value efficiently and that their risk or gradual decline in technical health is appropriately limited.

Your APM goals

If this describes your primary goals

  • We are building a business case to determine where and if APM is needed now.
  • We want to understand how well-supported our business capabilities, departments, or core functions are by our current applications.
  • We want to start our APM program with our core or critical applications.
  • We want to build our APM inventory for less than 150 applications (division, department, operating unit, government, small enterprise, etc.).
  • We want to start simple with a quick win for our 150 most important applications.
  • We want to start with an APM pilot before committing to an enterprise APM program.
  • We need to rationalize potentially redundant and underperforming applications to determine which to keep, replace, or retire.
  • Start with Rationalize Your Application Portfolio.
  • We want to start enterprise APM, with up to 150 critical applications.
  • We want to collect and analyze detailed information about our applications.
  • We need tools to help us calculate total cost of ownership (TCO) and value.
  • We want to customize our APM journey and rationalization.
  • We want to build a formal communication strategy for our APM program.

Create a balanced approach to value delivery

Enterprise Agility and Value Realization

Product Lifecycle Management
Align your product and service improvement and execution to enterprise strategy and value realization in three key areas: defining your products and services, aligning product/service owners, and developing your product vision.

Product Delivery Lifecycle (Agile DevOps )
Enhance enterprise agility by leveraging an Agile mindset and continuously improving your delivery throughput, quality, value realization, and adaptive governance.

Application Portfolio Management (We're here)
Transform your application portfolio into a cohesive service catalog aligned to your business capabilities by discovering, rationalizing, and modernizing your applications while improving application maintenance, management, and reuse.

The image contains a screenshot of the ThoughtModel on What Do We Mean by an Application Department Strategy?

For more information, download Build an Application Department Strategy.

APM comes at a justified cost

The image contains a screenshot of a graph that demonstrates APM comes at a justified cost.

The benefits of APM

APM identifies areas where you can reduce core spending and reinvest in innovation initiatives.

Other benefits can include:

  • Fewer redundancies
  • Less risk
  • Less complexity
  • Improved processes
  • Flexibility
  • Scalability

APM can be even harder for small enterprises and siloed IT

Having more applications than an organization needs means unnecessarily high costs and additional burden on the teams that support the applications. Especially in the case of small enterprises, this is added pressure the IT team cannot afford.

A poorly maintained portfolio will eventually hurt the organization more than it hurts IT.

Legacy systems, complex environments, or anything that leads to a portfolio that can’t adapt to changing organizational needs will eventually become a barrier to organizational growth and accomplishing objectives. Often the blame is put on the IT department.

#1 challenge small enterprise owners face in their use of technology:

Taking appropriate security precautions

24%

The costs of needed upgrades to technology

17%

The time it takes to fix problems

17%

The cost of maintaining technology

14%

Lack of expertise

9%

Breaks in service

7%
Source: National Small Business Association, 2019.

56% of small businesses cited inflexible technology as a barrier to growth.
Source: Salesforce as quoted by Tech Republic, 2019.

A hidden and inefficient application portfolio is the root cause of so many pains experienced by both IT and the organization:

  • Demand/capacity imbalance
  • Overspending
  • Security and business continuity risk
  • Delays in delivery
  • Barriers to growth

Every organization experiences some degree of application sprawl

The image contains a screenshot of an image that demonstrates application sprawl.

Application sprawl:

Inefficiencies within your application portfolio are created by the gradual and non-strategic accumulation of applications.

You have more apps than you need.

80% of CIOs/CEOs are misaligned on the target role for IT.
Source: Info-Tech’s CEO-CIO Alignment Survey (N=124)

Build your APM journey map

The image contains a screenshot of the slide Build your APM journey map.

Application rationalization provides insight

The image contains a screenshot of diuagrams that demonstrate application rationalization.

Application rationalization requires the collection of several data points that represent these perspectives and act as the criteria for determining a disposition for each of your applications.

Right-size rationalization for small businesses, educational, and government

Small/medium businesses, educational institutions, and government agencies may not need the same level of rationalization criteria. For faster results, Info-Tech’s APM tool can be adjusted to start with Organizational Value/Fit and Technical Health, with end-user criteria combined into Organizational Value.

The image contains a screenshot of a diagram that demonstrates right-size rationalization.

In the Rationalize Your Application Portfolio Tool, open the “Other Lens Criteria” for examples using the Value and Health lenses.

Assess your current application portfolio with Info-Tech’s APM Diagnostic Tool

The image contains a screenshot of the APM Diagnostic Tool.

Getting Started

One of the primary purposes of application portfolio management is to capture what we know and need to know on paper so that we can share a common vision and understanding of our portfolio. This enables better discussions and decisions with your application owners and stakeholders.

Interpreting your APM Foundations chart

The image contains a screenshot on Interpreting your APM Foundations chart.

Interpreting your APM Foundations results

The image contains a screenshot of the APM Foundations results.

Apply Info-Tech’s 6 R’s Rationalization Disposition Model

The image contains a model of Info-Tech's 6 R's Rationalization Disposition Model.

Disposition

Description

Reward

Prioritize new features or enhancement requests and openly welcome the expansion of these applications as new requests are presented.

Refresh

Address poor end-user satisfaction with a prioritized project. Consult with users to determine if UX issues require improvement to address satisfaction.

Refocus

Determine the root cause of the low value. Refocus, retrain, or refresh the UX to improve value. If no value is found, aim to "keep the lights on" until the app can be decommissioned.

Replace

Replace or rebuild the application as technical and user issues are putting important business capabilities at risk. Decommission the application alongside the replacement.

Remediate

Address poor technical health or risk with a prioritized project. Further consult with development and technical teams to determine if migration or refactoring is suited to address the technical issue.

Retire

Cancel any requested features and enhancements. Schedule the proper decommission and transfer end users to a new or alternative system if necessary.

TCO, compared relatively to organizational value and fit, helps determine the practicality of a disposition and the urgency of any call to action. Application alignment is factored in when assessing redundancies and has a separate set of dispositions.

Interpreting your APM Snapshot results

The image contains a screenshot of the AMP Snapshot results and how to interpret them.

Compare application groups

Group comparison can be used for more than just redundant/overlapping applications.

The image contains a screenshot on comparing application groups.

Populate roadmap example

The image contains a screenshot on populate roadmap example.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

MEMBER RATING

9.5/10
Overall Impact

$196,906
Average $ Saved

34
Average Days Saved

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Read what our members are saying

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 4-phase advisory process. You'll receive 5 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Lay your foundations
  • Call 1: Establish goals and foundations for your APM practice.

Guided Implementation 2: Improve your inventory
  • Call 1: Initiate inventory and determine data requirements.

Guided Implementation 3: Rationalize your applications
  • Call 1: Initiate rationalization with group of applications.
  • Call 2: Review result of first iteration and perform retrospective.

Guided Implementation 4: Populate your roadmap
  • Call 1: Initiate your roadmap and determine your ongoing APM practice.

Authors

Ricardo de Oliveira

Hans Eckman

Related Content: Architecture & Strategy

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