How to Tackle Your App Portfolio Modernization Strategy
- Determine business discovery: Why should we move?
Our IT team’s business drivers for app modernization focused on strategic value, delivery velocity and app interdependency. To develop a strategic prioritization of our app modernization candidates, we collected survey data from app owners asking key questions such as:
- Is this app customer facing?
- Does this app address compliance or security?
- Does this app impact revenue?
- Does this app have a customer SLA?
This survey data then allowed us to predict which applications would be most impactful to the business in terms of cost, risk and value.
- Prioritize app ranking per decisioning model: What should we modernize first?
With these technical and business findings, we were able to create a combined app score to rank applications based on the business justification and level of modernization effort required. This prioritized ranking from a clean single source of truth allowed the team to break out from analysis paralysis and begin strategic discussions on the path forward.
Portfolios have common characteristics across applications that can uncover insights to help inform our plan. We grouped applications using these characteristics to find key applications with lower risk and less complexity, while still maximizing benefits to the organization and validation for the modernization roadmap.
What’s Next
By developing a more strategic and efficient approach to modernizing our application portfolio, we were able to build an accurate inventory of our IT custom application portfolio landscape. Applying this custom business and technical decisioning criteria to our updated app inventory gave us a prioritized list of strategic app modernization candidates. With this information, we were able to bring together stakeholders for well-informed conversations and determine which apps had the strongest business case for modernization. Looking ahead, we have the tools, skills and decisioning framework to continue evolving our strategy as business needs change.
Final Thoughts
Application modernization enables IT teams to deliver software faster while enhancing resiliency, performance and security. However, the process for determining which legacy applications are best suited for modernization can take IT teams substantial time, resources and effort. By adopting a strategic framework and approach that incorporates key business and technical considerations, automation and low-touch analysis, organizations can jump through the initial inertia of analysis paralysis, make informed decisions and fast-forward to the app modernization work itself.
About App Navigator
VMware App Navigator is a consulting service engagement that helps your organization accelerate and execute on its application modernization and cloud transformation. This engagement leverages best-in-class tools and proven techniques to prioritize and begin executing your app modernization strategy. We use agile software development practices and teach your team new skills along the way.
To learn how App Navigator helps organizations deliver value in just days, read the Solution Overview, watch a webinar replay for more details and case studies,
Annie Lin is Director of Digital Transformation, Matt Campbell is Solutions Architect, and Brandon Blincoe is Program Strategist, VMware.
This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.
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