. : Identify

Technology planning and investment decisions at a major financial institution had flourished by individuals at varying leadership levels inside both business and technology organizational groups.   This created silos of support, cost, and unacceptable risk.

. : Frame

Investments were aligned to technical features the organization wished to take advantage of.  There was a tremendous of overlap of technical features with other tools and software as well as business capabilities.  Often times the technologies had 80-90% overlap in features.  This meant the company was over investing for only the 10-20% new feature without rationalizing both the technology capabilities in relation to the business capabilities.

. : Engage

We engaged leadership, lines of business, and architectural groups to understand the current state inventories and collect organizational perspectives.   This included application inventory management and business value work sessions.  We also partnered with business to create a capability model.

. : Solve

By reaching out to all lines of business, we were able to compile an inventory of business value applications and align the technology to that landscape by both business value and technical landscape.   We owned the inventory and data collection,  assuring that technical and business ownership was understood and documented, and collected metrics on business value, technical fitness, architectural profile, and cost.   We also worked to create business capability model which we used to provide meaning to the application portfolio.  This provided a foundation for rationalization efforts and the continued efforts to mature the Application Portfolio Management practice.  The capability model also allowed the organization to align its scaled agile efforts to business outcomes instead of delivery projects.  The business capability model became a strategic anchor for the organization.