Let your IT investment shine with APM metrics and management reporting

Introduction

The pressure on understanding and proving the value of IT is stronger than ever. Internal debates about which systems are providing the most value vs. cost of ownership rage on. Decisions about what to do with so called ‘legacy’ systems have to be made at some point, and this is where ‘defenders of the faith’ step in. We often see a division of opinion between the IT Managers or Directors whose careers grew from creating and refining these valuable core (legacy) systems, and the IT Architects and CIOs who believe (or are led to believe) that moving, migrating or rewriting using the latest technology will save money while improving efficiency and flexibility.

This is nothing new, and these debates are allowed to continue simply because organizations lack the facts and figures to help them to arrive at the best decisions.

Micro Focus has stated for many years that there is an incredible amount of value sitting in our customers’ legacy systems and that often the value is unrecognised because it is clouded by a feeling that there is an inability to innovate when you are using ‘older’ technology.

If you are in the position of needing to illustrate precisely how much value and cost is associated with your existing systems, old and new, the good news is that the tools and processes now exist to take the guesswork out of this exercise. Application Portfolio Management solutions can help.

About APM

Application Portfolio Management, or APM, provides a fact based infrastructure that allows organizations to make the right decisions regarding the future of their applications, such as:

• which applications to maintain
• which applications to further invest in
• which applications to replace
• which applications to withdraw/ retire   

An APM approach allows applications to be placed into categories according to the business needs they fulfil, the usage within the business, and the customer satisfaction associated with the application.

The ability to manage your application portfolio provides IT departments with the knowledge required for reducing costs and improving the strategic value of IT systems to the business.

How could this be useful to me?

When implementing an APM solution, these are the key things to think about. It isn’t just about smart technology that can analyse and organize what you have today. Choose an approach (and vendor) that can help you address the following concerns.

The Approach

• Ensure the business and IT are both totally agreed on what factors need to be reported, and the value of doing so. Seeking agreement in this way will avoid future conflicts and helps align IT with the business more closely, which can only be a good thing for us all.
• Factors for measurement and reporting must be prioritised according to business priorities, rather than IT priorities.
• Identify what you want to measure before implementing an APM solution.   

Metrics and reporting 

• How do you accurately measure how well IT is performing? How do you communicate this with your users?
• What measurements are important to your users in the business? Make sure these can be reported in terms that mean something to both the IT and business stakeholders. Consider:
• • System availability
  • System quality
  • Usability
  • Service Level Agreements   
• Consider how to report back on these factors. Often a simple red/amber/green highlighting on a report against each factor on each IT system is an easy way of communicating at an appropriately high level.
• Consider how the information gathered can be used to answer higher level strategic questions that may be asked such as:
• • What are the longer term trends for IT spend vs. the benefit returned?
  • How often does a new IT capability (such as introduction of a new architecture, language or system upgrade) allow new business initiatives to be implemented?   
• Consider how to assess and report on the factors that influence your internal processes as well as your IT systems, such as:
• • Time and cost associated with implementing IT changes, by system (eg. cost and time for each function point addition)
  • Length of time to fix a user problem, and the number of steps involved in doing so, by system.
  • Project success – which projects were on time, and met the agreed delivery criteria   

Summary

In a world of global business where complexity and competitive factors are growing exponentially, it is no longer appropriate to use guesswork to answer key questions about performance, spend and investment. Even if the guesswork is performed by the most experienced of system or application specialists, there will be a time soon when IT and business complexity is greater than an individual’s ability to make key decisions for the whole organization in a consistent way across all aspects of the business. As IT systems grow, we need smarter and more automated ways to capture key data and report based on facts rather than opinion. Now is the time to consider an APM approach and how this could help promote the value of your IT systems.