Capture application group data
Because running applications usually constitute the largest part of IT spending, application portfolio governance is crucial to containing costs and to ensuring that the IT support to the business is consistent and reliable. Attaining answers to the following questions is critical to the maintenance of a healthy and cost-effective architecture as well as planning future operating models:
- Which applications should be retired?
- Which applications should be invested in?
- Which applications can be consolidated or optimized?
- Which applications are to be tolerated in the landscape but need observation?
- Which applications have risks that should be mitigated?
- Which applications need to have their lifecycles extended or reduced?
Alfabet FastLane allows you to evaluate and analyze applications in the context of various application portfolios in order to understand the technical and information architectures relevant to the applications, the use of the applications by the business as well as application costs, failure rates, and risks. You can logically structure and bundle the applications into application groups in order to assess the application portfolio. The evaluation of applications in application groups is based on preconfigured indicators used to evaluate the applications as well as analytics and business questions to help you to understand the usage, performance, and criticality of the application portfolio in the IT landscape.
Application portfolios are defined in Alfabet FastLane via application groups that bundle applications. Each application can be assigned to multiple groups. The applications should be bundled in application groups that are relevant to the goals for the portfolio assessment process. For example, applications could be logically structured in application groups according to:
- the high-level business processes that the applications support
- the organizations that the applications support
- the organizations that are responsible for the operation and maintenance of the applications
- the technology that the applications use
- or any other ad-hoc assessments of segments of the IT landscape
In the navigation panel, click Application Architecture > Application Groups to open the explorer and data workbench for application groups. Per default, the data workbench displays only a set of basic attributes. You can add more columns to capture other attributes directly in the data workbench or you can navigate to an application group's content area and define it in more detail there. Click to learn about how to use data workbenches.
Add an application group at the top-level of the hierarchy. Click the root node of the explorer and click the New button. The edit panel opens on the right where you can define basic data.
Add a subordinate application group. Click the parent application group in the explorer, go to the Overview page and open the Subordinate Application Group view. Click New > Create New Application Group.
Change the parent of an application group. In the Subordinate Application Groups view, click New > Move Existing Application Group Here to open a selector where you can chose the application group to move to the new parent application group.
Edit an application group. Edit the application group directly in the data table. Or select the checkbox 
for the application group you want to edit and click the Edit 
button to open the edit panel.
Define the application group's basic data. All mandatory fields must be defined to create the application group and save it.
- Name: (Mandatory) Enter a name for the application group. You can add an abbreviation (3-4 letters) of the name in the Short Name field to use in diagrams and other visualizations.
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Type: This attribute is optional and lets you specify a group type that is used for analysis in analytics dashboards and data workbenches. Possible values are:
- Project: Application group with applications used to achieve a milestone in a set amount of time. Application groups of type Project allow for KPI analysis of all grouped applications.
- Building Block: Application group with applications that are used to describe reference architectures of a specific solution.
- User Group: Application group with applications that are used by the same set of users in an organization.
- Icon: Choose an icon to visualize the location in diagrams and other visualizations.
- Authorized Access tab: The user who creates the application group is the authorized user per default. This can be changed. Select one or more authorized user groups that shall have write permissions to the object. All users in the authorized user group can edit the application group.
Applications must already be in the repository in order to assign applications to an application group. Some business questions in Alfabet FastLane can only be answered if the relationships between applications and application groups are defined. Click to find out how to capture application data.
Every application should be assigned to at least one application group in order to assess the applications in various contexts.
- Click the navigate
button of the application group to open the content area. - Go to the Application Portfolio page and scroll to the Applications view.
- Click New > Create an Application to add a new application to the application group or Add an Existing Application to add an application in the repository to the application group.