The Requirements of A Definition
The definition of an application has the following needs in the context of Application Portfolio Management:
- It must be simple for business team members to explain, understand, and apply.
- It must make sense to development, operations, and project management in the IT groups.
- It must be useful as an input to a complex function whose output is the overall cost of the portfolio. In other words, there are many factors that lead to the overall cost of an IT portfolio. The sheer number of applications is one of those factors. Therefore, the definition of an application must be useful in that calculation.
- It must be useful for the members of the Enterprise Architecture team who are attempting to judge a project with respect to their objectives for portfolio optimization and simplification.
- It must clearly define the boundaries of an application so that a person working on a measurable 'portfolio simplification' activity cannot simply redefine the boundaries of two existing applications in such a way as to call them a single application.
Many organizations will readdress the definition of an application within the context of their IT portfolio management and governance practices. For that reason, this definition should be considered as a working start.
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