Mike Walker's Blog

Application Portfolio Management

It's amazing the e-mails I received as a result of the Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Management article and the many posts I have made in relation to APM. To all the responded, Thank You!

The Enterprise Architecture space is littered with tools that are either address niche areas or just provide high level coverage of EA. I look at EA as a facilitating function that encompasses it's own processes but also many other enterprise processes. Since this is the case, it is tough for vendors to address all of these concerns. Often times vendors will build a governance tool or framework that they say is an EA tool. As they say, it's close but no cigar.

So what does this mean? These tools leaves the EA space fragmented and end Enterprise Architects confused. Since I view EA as a facilitating function of many others that means that there isn't just one master EA tool but rather a EA toolbox.  APM is just one of many of the tools in that toolbox.

If you are new to my blog or just need to catch up here is where we are at:

Last month I published MSDN article that I have written for the Application Portfolio Management space.  This primer will walk architects through the synergies between Application Portfolio Management and Enterprise Architecture. The article is titled Integration of Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Management. I hope you enjoy it and provide some of your thoughts and comments on it as well.

Full post: http://blogs.msdn.com/mikewalker/archive/2007/11/29/article-integration-of-enterprise-architecture-and-application-portfolio-management.aspx

Other related blog entries:

• Obtaining Enterprise Architecture Metrics - Part 1
• Obtaining Enterprise Architecture Metrics - Part 2

 

As I mentioned before I got a ton of responses from internally at Microsoft, customers and you. Thank you for the kind responses and sorry for my delayed response. If you follow my blog you have noticed that I have been a bit busy launching some very comprehensive materials.

The majority of the comments were centered around what are Microsoft's offerings for APM and PPM. There is a lack of awareness on what Microsoft offerings are out there. I think we as Microsoft haven't been doing a good enough job of talking about these solutions. I would like to change that :) It is clear that you are hungry for more information on this space. Remember as we publish guidance we are starting small and working are way along. Keep you comments coming, they are great and help us tailor what we build and publish all that much better!

Here is an overview video that details our product offering in this space:

Video: Application Portfolio Management Overview

There was some activity in the blogosphere on this article.

Eric Swanson writes:

...I would have liked to see suggestions that were more evolutionary. Rather than jumping on Project Portfolio software, I would have liked to see a suggestion to perhaps start simply with spreadsheets and maybe suggest the types of information most likely to deliver the highest value (end of life dates, etc.)...

Eric brings up a great point about how I dive right into the Portfolio software. That was partly by design. Since this is just a primer on EA and APM I do not go into the "How To's" or detailed guidance of APM. That is a much longer article. But... what I am hearing load and clear is that you want more guidance on APM specifically. What Eric eludes to is he is looking for the step by step guidance on how to go from working from multiple Excel spreadsheets to a mature APM tool and practice. I am unaware of any internal Microsoft guidance on the end to end APM guidance. This would fill a big gap. I will keep you updated on this item as I feel this is critical.

 

Nick Malik writes from his blog:

I decided to take a few minutes of my vacation time to catch up on my reading, and I read through Mike Walker's article on MSDN on APM and EA.  It is an interesting and useful article. (I'd give it a B-).

One thing that I'd like to highlight in the practice of application portfolio management is that of risk management, an area that Mike implicitely touches on, but which I believe is fundamental to the business case of APM.

Nick is absolutely right that I do not talk explicitly about risk management and it's relationship. I encourage you to read Nick's post on this. It is very useful. Your probably asking yourself why I didn't go into these details. Well, as I mentioned in the post that describes the whitepaper (above) this is just a primer on one small aspect (relation of EA activities to APM) of APM. This article just scratches the surface of APM. As many of you know, I am a former EA from a bank. Risk management is hard coded in my brain! I am also a practitioner, I have started an APM practice from scratch and deployed in an enterprise. This topic is near and dear to me. Now, I excluded it because I wanted to describe the breadth of the topic rather than the micro level details. With that said, we should do something around the risk management aspects. I may write a post or a full MSDN article on this later.

 

More Information on Microsoft's APM tools

• APM Homepage
• Take a Tour of MS APM
• TechNet  Resources
• Project Server 2007
• Project Portfolio Server 2007
• EPM Solution
• EPM Overview Demo

Blogs

• Project Team
• Project Programmability

 

Partners to help with APM:

UMT Consulting Group

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture

There was some activity in the blogosphere on this article.

Eric Swanson writes:

...I would have liked to see suggestions that were more evolutionary. Rather than jumping on Project Portfolio software, I would have liked to see a suggestion to perhaps start simply with spreadsheets and maybe suggest the types of information most likely to deliver the highest value (end of life dates, etc.)...

Eric brings up a great point about how I dive right into the Portfolio software. That was partly by design. Since this is just a primer on EA and APM I do not go into the "How To's" or detailed guidance of APM. That is a much longer article. But... what I am hearing load and clear is that you want more guidance on APM specifically. What Eric eludes to is he is looking for the step by step guidance on how to go from working from multiple Excel spreadsheets to a mature APM tool and practice. I am unaware of any internal Microsoft guidance on the end to end APM guidance. This would fill a big gap. I will keep you updated on this item as I feel this is critical.

 

Nick Malik writes from his blog:

I decided to take a few minutes of my vacation time to catch up on my reading, and I read through Mike Walker's article on MSDN on APM and EA.  It is an interesting and useful article. (I'd give it a B-).

One thing that I'd like to highlight in the practice of application portfolio management is that of risk management, an area that Mike implicitely touches on, but which I believe is fundamental to the business case of APM.

Nick is absolutely right that I do not talk explicitly about risk management and it's relationship. I encourage you to read Nick's post on this. It is very useful. Your probably asking yourself why I didn't go into these details. Well, as I mentioned in the post that describes the whitepaper (above) this is just a primer on one small aspect (relation of EA activities to APM) of APM. This article just scratches the surface of APM. As many of you know, I am a former EA from a bank. Risk management is hard coded in my brain! I am also a practitioner, I have started an APM practice from scratch and deployed in an enterprise. This topic is near and dear to me. Now, I excluded it because I wanted to describe the breadth of the topic rather than the micro level details. With that said, we should do something around the risk management aspects. I may write a post or a full MSDN article on this later.

 

More Information on Microsoft's APM tools

• APM Homepage
• Take a Tour of MS APM
• TechNet  Resources
• Project Server 2007
• Project Portfolio Server 2007
• EPM Solution
• EPM Overview Demo

Blogs

• Project Team
• Project Programmability

 

Partners to help with APM:

UMT Consulting Group

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture

There was some activity in the blogosphere on this article.

Eric Swanson writes:

...I would have liked to see suggestions that were more evolutionary. Rather than jumping on Project Portfolio software, I would have liked to see a suggestion to perhaps start simply with spreadsheets and maybe suggest the types of information most likely to deliver the highest value (end of life dates, etc.)...

Eric brings up a great point about how I dive right into the Portfolio software. That was partly by design. Since this is just a primer on EA and APM I do not go into the "How To's" or detailed guidance of APM. That is a much longer article. But... what I am hearing load and clear is that you want more guidance on APM specifically. What Eric eludes to is he is looking for the step by step guidance on how to go from working from multiple Excel spreadsheets to a mature APM tool and practice. I am unaware of any internal Microsoft guidance on the end to end APM guidance. This would fill a big gap. I will keep you updated on this item as I feel this is critical.

 

Nick Malik writes from his blog:

I decided to take a few minutes of my vacation time to catch up on my reading, and I read through Mike Walker's article on MSDN on APM and EA.  It is an interesting and useful article. (I'd give it a B-).

One thing that I'd like to highlight in the practice of application portfolio management is that of risk management, an area that Mike implicitely touches on, but which I believe is fundamental to the business case of APM.

Nick is absolutely right that I do not talk explicitly about risk management and it's relationship. I encourage you to read Nick's post on this. It is very useful. Your probably asking yourself why I didn't go into these details. Well, as I mentioned in the post that describes the whitepaper (above) this is just a primer on one small aspect (relation of EA activities to APM) of APM. This article just scratches the surface of APM. As many of you know, I am a former EA from a bank. Risk management is hard coded in my brain! I am also a practitioner, I have started an APM practice from scratch and deployed in an enterprise. This topic is near and dear to me. Now, I excluded it because I wanted to describe the breadth of the topic rather than the micro level details. With that said, we should do something around the risk management aspects. I may write a post or a full MSDN article on this later.

 

More Information on Microsoft's APM tools

• APM Homepage
• Take a Tour of MS APM
• TechNet  Resources
• Project Server 2007
• Project Portfolio Server 2007
• EPM Solution
• EPM Overview Demo

Blogs

• Project Team
• Project Programmability

 

Partners to help with APM:

UMT Consulting Group

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture

Article: Integration of Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Management

Published today is the new MSDN article that I have written for the Application Portfolio Management space.  This primer will walk architects through the synergies between Application Portfolio Management and Enterprise Architecture. The article is titled Integration of Enterprise Architecture and Application Portfolio Management. I hope you enjoy it and provide some of your thoughts and comments on it as well.

 

The visibility that APM provides into your enterprises is absolutely essential for truly building real-world strategies, sustainable governance and a prosperous service oriented architecture practice.

Full Article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb896054.aspx

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture

Be Cautious about APM Discovery Agents

I was reading a recent article from InformationWeek about APM and it had concerned me a little bit. The article was titled "Performance Anxiety" and meant to address APM product vendors. For whatever reason, Microsoft's product line was not included.

I am still trying to determine the intentions of the article. It was not clear. However what was clear was the suggestion that in order to be successful at APM server agents are necessary.

Be very careful with assumptions like this. Application Discovery Agents are NOT the key here.

This is not to say the article was bad, but that it implies and talk a lot about agents when there are many other facets to APM. I do like the diagram below on the APM risk analysis.

Source: Information Week APM Performance Anxiety

Let me tell a story from my In my previous life. I was a key resource in the vendor selection and architecture processes for selecting our vendor for APM. We choose one of the big stack IT Management Suites that addressed APM and PPM.

The promise of monitors for the application space became very problematic. We did find that for Service Management (MOF or ITIL processes) that there are some very useful monitors for networks and physical servers. The problem with the application space was that it turned into a HUGE development effort or minimal return. Application monitoring was quickly disbanded.

Until the Application Monitoring further matures I would suggest not to go down this road yet. There is still a great deal of maturing that needs to happen. InformationWeek's analysis shows this as well.

Instead of focusing on those aspects I would have you consider how APM effects your Enterprise Architecture processes around Technology Life Cycles. Below is a common, but simple grid that is used for basic analysis on what application architectures you should retire, spend less time on, embrace or empower.

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture APM

EA and Application Portfolio Management

For many enterprise architects there is increasing pressure from CxO’s to cut costs, reduce inefficiencies and to foster agility in systems. Enterprises invest over 70% of their budgets purely on maintaining their existing asset investments. This shows that there is a clear and present broken link between strategic business objectives and “Keeping the Lights On” in the IT department. This is verified by a recent report by AMR Research that reports that 75 percent of IT organizations have little oversight over their project portfolios and employ non-repeatable, chaotic planning processes.

With an Application Portfolio Management (APM) practice it allows EA's to gain visibility into the applications impacts that reside in the enterprise.

Forester says that Application portfolio management (APM) dashboards provide visibility and the ability to cut applications maintenance support costs by as much as 30%. See the July 22, 2005, Market Overview “APM Tools Will Reach $500 Million To $700 Million By 2008.”

 

What is APM?

There are many definitions across the industry. There are debates on the definition of APM that frequently cause confusion or derail APM initiatives. There is no a single definition of APM, but is that a problem?

In the near tem I don't think so. Until our tooling vendors mature a bit more we have time to define it as little or as much as we want. So my recommendation is to be pragmatic about it. just like with everything EA, start small and iterate through some maturity cycle. APM views can then be progressively refined, ultimately arriving at catalogs of the various representations that can be mapped and or analyzed for the multiple areas of concern.

Below are a few opinions on definitions, at the end of the day. You be the judge for what fit's your organizational needs.

Microsoft: Application Portfolio Management aids organizations gain visibility, insight, and control across all work; thus enhancing decision-making, improving alignment with business strategy, maximizing resource utilization, as well as measuring and increasing operational efficiency.

IBM: This refers to the practice of managing an entire group or major subset of software applications within a portfolio. Organizations regard these applications as investments because they require development (or acquisition) costs and incur continuing maintenance costs. Also, organizations must constantly make financial decisions about new and existing software applications, including whether to invest in modifying them, whether to buy additional applications, and when to "sell" -- that is, retire -- an obsolete software application.

Gartner: Application portfolio management processes fill gaps in the knowledge used to determine the most-effective deployment of IT resources. Filling those gaps improves consistency and flags opportunities to reduce total life cycle cost.

Wikipedia: Application Portfolio Management attempts to use the lessons of financial portfolio management to justify and measure the financial benefits of each application in comparison to the costs of the application's maintenance and operations.

 

So What are the Synergies between Enterprise Architecture and APM

To be effective at enterprise architecture APM is absolutely necessary. Some may not realize they are performing APM functions for one reason or another. However, to support necessary EA functions APM information is collected in either a formal COTS tool or a custom solution. While it is difficult to capture there are many ways to get this information.

APM provides many of the multi-faceted aspects that are required for an Enterprise Architect to be effective. These include:

· Application Costs

· Supporting Business Process and Capabilities

· Business Objectives or Missions

· Supporting Technology

· Environments

 

These aspects above only show EA’s a partial view just from an application perspective. The view point of an EA is much broader. So to augment this application view other views are blended. EA’s should extend the well defined APM information with Enterprise Architecture Metadata where the Application Architecture can be linked to other aspects. Once this is in place multiple viewed analysis of an application provides enormous value not only the EA but other IT decision makers.

As shown above APM feeds into the three core aspects of an EA's role. APM’s providing a backbone to the rest of the EA processes (i.e., Organizational, Strategic, Programs).

Below are some examples of processes APM contributes to:

· Technology Life Cycles (TLC) – The process in which a life cycle is attached to an asset. The asset could be an application and or a technology standard.

· Principles and Policies – Aligning applications to principles and policies is fundamental activity for EA’s. If the principles and policies are aligned with the business this provides the full tractability back to the business.

· Standards Alignment – By linking applications to standards EA can not only gauge the overall effectiveness of a standard but also analyze why standards are not being adopted. Thus providing a level of governance and proactively to impact the standards list in a positive way.

· Architecture Decisions – Because all of the applications are in this APM repository EA’s are able to bridge APM information with other information that will allow them to make informed decisions.

· Architecture Review Boards (ARB) – It is common to have EA’s on an ARB. APM provides essential PPM and application data that provides visibility across multiple domains.

 

Tags: Enterprise Architecture