Application Portfolio Management (APM) Best Practices

Overview

The most common failure at the beginning of an APM initiative is attempting to build a comprehensive, well-governed portfolio before conducting discovery. Teams populate the portfolio from memory, existing documentation, and organizational charts - producing an inventory that reflects what people believe they have rather than what the organization actually runs. The resulting portfolio systematically misses shadow IT, undocumented departmental tools, legacy applications running on forgotten infrastructure, and SaaS subscriptions procured without central oversight. An inventory built on assumption rather than discovery is wrong before it is finished, and every analysis built on top of it inherits that incorrectness.

Best Practice

Begin every APM initiative with a structured discovery phase that systematically identifies all applications operating in the enterprise before populating a formal portfolio. Combine multiple discovery approaches: automated scanning of network infrastructure, software deployment systems, and endpoint management tools to surface installed and running applications; financial discovery through accounts payable and procurement records to identify SaaS subscriptions and license purchases; business unit interviews to identify departmental tools and informal applications that automated scanning cannot reach; and review of IT service desk and change management records to surface applications that generate operational activity but are not formally registered anywhere.

Benefit(s)

Discovery before documentation produces an application inventory that reflects organizational reality rather than organizational assumptions. Previously unknown applications - shadow IT, unmanaged SaaS subscriptions, forgotten legacy systems - are surfaced and brought under governance. The scope of the portfolio challenge becomes visible, enabling realistic planning for data collection, governance, and rationalization. Organizations that invest in thorough discovery consistently find that their portfolio is significantly larger, more expensive, and more complex than their pre-discovery estimates suggested - and they are better positioned for it.