Application Portfolio Management (APM) Best Practices

Overview

Application portfolio integration is not only a technical exercise - it is an organizational and cultural one. The users and teams whose applications are being rationalized have emotional and operational attachments to the tools they use and have built their workflows around. Application owners whose applications are designated as the rationalized instance rather than the surviving instance experience the rationalization as an organizational and sometimes personal loss. Teams asked to migrate to the acquirer’s applications may resist a transition they perceive as the acquirer imposing its preferences rather than objectively selecting the best available option. These organizational and cultural dimensions, if not actively managed with the same deliberateness as the technical dimensions, produce resistance that delays rationalization, degrades the user experience of the combined organization, and erodes the morale of teams whose tools and ways of working are being replaced.

Best Practice

Address the organizational and cultural dimensions of portfolio integration as explicitly as the technical dimensions, with defined owners and defined activities in the integration roadmap. Communicate the rationale for every rationalization decision in terms that acknowledge the quality and history of the application being retired and recognize the disruption that migration creates for the people involved. Where feasible, involve users of both instances in migration planning to ensure that user needs are understood and addressed in the migration approach. Provide adequate migration support, training, and transition time. Select surviving applications based on objective assessment criteria and communicate those criteria transparently so that rationalization decisions are understood as merit-based rather than politically motivated by acquirer preference.

Benefit(s)

Actively managing the organizational and cultural dimensions of portfolio integration reduces the resistance that delays rationalization programs and degrades the user experience of the combined organization during the critical post-acquisition period when organizational trust is being established. Users who feel that their applications were evaluated fairly and that their transition needs are being managed with genuine care accept rationalization outcomes more readily and remain more productive through the transition period. The combined organization develops a unified technology culture faster than organizations that treat integration as a purely technical exercise and are surprised by the organizational resistance they encounter from people who feel that their experience and preferences were disregarded in the process.