Technology Portfolio Management (TPM) Best Practices

Overview

Every acquisition combines two technology portfolios that were each governed independently, with their own Standards Registers, their own technology choices for overlapping capability categories, and their own governance cultures. The combined portfolio contains redundancies that the rationalization process must resolve: the two organizations may each have their own database platforms, their own development frameworks, their own monitoring tools, their own collaboration platforms. Allowing both sets to coexist indefinitely in the combined portfolio doubles the license cost, doubles the maintenance burden, doubles the skills requirements, and doubles the governance overhead for every capability category where redundancy exists. Rationalization is the program that resolves these redundancies through a governed, sequenced consolidation to the preferred platform in each category.

Best Practice

Initiate the combined technology portfolio rationalization program as a defined workstream within the post-acquisition technology integration program, with the consolidated platform standards as the first deliverable and the migration and decommissioning programs as the execution deliverables. Develop the consolidated Technology Standards Register for the combined organization within the first ninety days of close, drawing on the best of both organizations’ standards and applying the IF4IT technology assessment framework to resolve cases where the two organizations have different standards for the same capability category. Apply the Rationalization Posture and Strategic Disposition frameworks to every technology in the combined Technologies Inventory family, using the combined assessment to identify the platforms that will carry Move-To dispositions in the consolidated portfolio and the platforms that will carry Move-Away or Retire dispositions. Sequence the migration and decommissioning programs to produce the greatest financial and operational benefit per unit of integration effort, prioritizing the highest-cost redundancies and the most business-critical capability categories.

Benefit(s)

Portfolio rationalization of the combined technology estate following an acquisition produces the technology integration synergies that deal models project but that ungoverned integration programs frequently fail to realize. License costs are reduced as redundant platforms are retired. Maintenance burden is halved for every capability category where consolidation is achieved. Skills investment is concentrated on the consolidated platform set rather than spread across a persistently redundant estate. And the combined organization develops a unified technology governance culture more rapidly when the governance framework — the Standards Register, the Technologies Inventory family, the assessment and rationalization disciplines — is applied to the full combined portfolio within the first year of integration rather than allowing separate governance cultures to persist indefinitely.