Keep Application Documentation and the Application Record Aligned

This chapter explains how to keep an Application’s Documentation and its Application Record consistent with each other. The broader review of all of an Application’s documentation with every Release is addressed in the chapter “Review and Correct Application Documentation with Every Release.”

Why Alignment Matters

The Application Record and the Application Documentation describe the same Application. When they disagree, for example on who the owner is, which environments the Application runs in, or what data it holds, people acting on one source make decisions that contradict people acting on the other. Portfolio decisions, risk assessments, and AI tools that rely on the Application Inventory may then be working from information the Application team knows to be wrong, while the team may be relying on documentation the inventory contradicts.

Establish Alignment

When the Application Record and the Application Documentation disagree, neither automatically wins. Disagreement means at least one of them is wrong. Determine which is correct, and correct the other. The Application Manager is accountable for ensuring that both are correct and aligned.

Alignment should be checked at every Release, and whenever either the record or the documentation is changed outside a Release. Where the template’s Record section is derived from the Application Inventory’s attributes, and especially where it automatically populates the Application Record, alignment becomes much easier to maintain.

Document and Share Alignment Checks

Record, as part of each Release’s documentation review, that the Application Record and the Application Documentation have been checked for consistency, and record any discrepancies found and how they were resolved.

Best Practice: Keep Application Documentation and the Application Record Aligned

It is a best practice to both establish and document the solution for consistency between an Application’s record and its documentation: check them against each other at every Release and after any out-of-cycle change, correct whichever is wrong, and hold the Application Manager accountable for their alignment.

Benefits: Aligned sources mean that the Application team, portfolio managers, risk functions, and AI tools all act on the same facts about the Application. Checking at every Release catches drift while it is small and its cause is still known, instead of discovering years later that the inventory and the documentation tell different stories.

Advance Maturity Deliberately: Crawl, Walk, Run

• Crawl. The Application Manager manually compares the Application Record with the documentation at each Release.

• Walk. Alignment is a checklist item in every Release, and discrepancies are recorded and tracked to resolution.

• Run. The Application Record is populated automatically from the documentation, and automated consistency checks flag any discrepancy as soon as it appears.

Connections to Related IF4IT Practices and Inventories

The Applications Inventory and Attributes describes the Application Record. The Enterprise Inventory Management Best Practices addresses inventory data quality.