Connect TPM to the Systems Development Lifecycle (SDLC)

Overview

Technologies do not enter the portfolio only at the moment of a formal review — they are proposed, adopted, and introduced continuously through the ordinary work of the Systems Development Lifecycle. A TPM program that only updates the Technologies Inventory at rationalization-review time is, by construction, always working from a partially stale picture. This connection is the natural technology-level counterpart to the “Connect TPM to the Applications Inventory — the primary source of technology adoption data” chapter, which captures adoption evidence after the fact; this chapter captures it as it happens.

Best Practice

Establish an explicit connection between TPM and the Systems Development Lifecycle so key SDLC events — a new technology entering development, a major version or dependency change, a new technology stack decision — update the Technologies Inventory as they happen, rather than waiting for the next scheduled portfolio review. Where the SDLC discipline is governed by a separate function or document, name that dependency explicitly and define what data TPM needs, at what frequency, and through what mechanism.

Benefit(s)

Connecting TPM to the SDLC keeps the Technologies Inventory current between formal review cycles, closing the gap where a technology’s actual adoption state and its last-recorded state diverge. New technology adoption is captured as it happens rather than discovered retroactively at the next review, and because this data already exists as a byproduct of ordinary development work, connecting to it requires no additional manual data entry burden.