Register Every New Application at Intake — Before It Is Built or Bought

This chapter explains why every new Application should be registered in the Application Inventory at intake, before the enterprise acts on any decision to build or buy it.

Why Register at Intake

Many enterprises register an Application only once it reaches Production, if at all. By then, the Application has already consumed budget, created Integrations and data, and possibly committed the enterprise to vendor contracts, all invisibly to the enterprise’s portfolio management, architecture, and risk functions. Registering at intake changes this. From the moment an Application is proposed, the enterprise knows it exists, who is accountable for it, and where it is in its lifecycle.

Early registration lets Application Portfolio Management spot proposed Applications that duplicate existing ones, lets Enterprise Architecture engage before key design decisions are made, and lets Security, and Risk and Compliance, identify early which controls will apply.

Establish Registration at Intake

At the Intake and Strategizing phase, create an initial Application Record in the Application Inventory containing, at a minimum:

• The Application’s proposed Application Name and its Semantic Identifier.

• A brief description of its purpose and the capabilities it is expected to provide.

• Its Business Application Owner and, where known, its IT Application Owner and Application Manager.

• Its expected Sourcing Type, where known.

• A lifecycle status indicating that it is proposed or in planning.

Then create the Application’s space in the Digital Library, based on the Application Documentation Template, so that documentation begins at the same time. The initial record will be incomplete, and that is expected; it is filled in as the Application progresses through the SDLC.

Where the enterprise maintains a mapping between its Application Inventory attribute groups and its documentation template, as suggested in the chapter “Derive the Documentation Template’s Application Record Section from the Applications Inventory,” intake is a good time to use it to identify which attributes can already be populated.

Document and Share the Registration

Record the Application’s Semantic Identifier and Digital Library location in the Application Record and in the documentation, and notify Application Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture, and other relevant governance functions that a new Application has been proposed.

Best Practice: Register Every New Application at Intake

It is a best practice to both establish and document the solution for making an Application visible from the start: register every proposed Application in the Application Inventory at intake, before it is built or bought, and open its documentation in the Digital Library at the same time.

Benefits: Registering at intake makes every proposed Application visible to portfolio, architecture, security, and risk functions while their input can still shape it, rather than after decisions have been made and money spent. Starting the documentation at the same moment ensures knowledge is captured from the very first decision, not reconstructed after deployment.

Common Antipatterns

Connections to Related IF4IT Practices and Inventories

The Applications Inventory and Attributes describes the attributes of the Application Record. The Application Portfolio Management (APM) Best Practices addresses how new Applications are evaluated against the existing portfolio. The Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC) Best Practices describes the Intake and Strategizing phase.