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. The Name attribute is mandatory.
Create a new application group as a child (subordinate) of this application group. Click the parent application group in the explorer, go to the Overview page and scroll to the Subordinate Application Group view. Click the 3-dots 
menu > New > Create New Application Group.
Make an existing application group a child (subordinate) of this application group. Click the parent application group in the explorer, go to the Overview page and scroll to the Subordinate Application Group view. Click the 3-dots menu > New > Move Existing Application Group Here. A selector opens where you can chose an application group and move it to this application group. The application group you chose is now a child of the application group you are working with.
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.
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 group's content area > Overview. In the Asset Grouping section, go to the Applications field, enter the name of the application that you want to assign to the application group.
Or click in the field to open the selector and select each application that you want to assign to the application group. Click outside of the selector to close it and update the Applications field.