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Playbook · Change · 7 steps
Rationalising the application portfolio
Decide what to keep, fix, move or retire across hundreds of applications.
“…if we wish to count lines of code, we should not regard them as "lines produced" but as "lines spent"…”
- 1Capability MappingWhich capabilities does each application serve, and where do several overlap?Describe what the business does, independent of how, by whom, or with which system.Open
- 2TIME Portfolio TriageFor each application: tolerate, invest, migrate or eliminate?Sort each application by business value and technical quality into Tolerate, Invest, Migrate or Eliminate, and fund it accordingly.Open
- 3Total Cost of OwnershipWhat does each one really cost per year, including people, licences and risk?The purchase price is the smallest part of what a technology costs over its lifetime.Open
- 4Sunk Cost FallacyAre we keeping anything only because of what we have already spent on it?Past investment is gone either way. Decide based on future costs and benefits only.Open
- 5Chesterton's FenceBefore retiring it, do we know every reason it still exists?Don't remove a fence until you know why it was put up.Open
- 6Inertia (Legacy Gravity)Who and what depends on it, and how will we bring them along?Established systems keep doing what they're doing unless a force greater than their momentum acts on them.Open
- 7Strangler FigHow do we move users and data off it piece by piece?Replace a legacy system gradually by growing the new one around it until the old one can be removed.Open