What is our technical debt?

The business question What is our technical debt? shows applications and the components that the applications use and helps you understand the critical dependence that applications have on the technological components that they rely on to run.

Look for applications that will not be able to provide support to the business due to end-of-life technologies. This business question helps you to identify at-risk applications that are critical to the business and derive the necessary measures to mitigate potential risk before an application or component goes out of service.

Use the method that is most convenient for you:

  • In the left navigation panel, enter What is our technical debt? in the Search Navigation field.
  • In the left navigation panel, click Home. In the content area, go to the Business Questions page and click the tile for What is our technical debt?
  • In the left navigation panel, expand the sections Business Questions and Transparency and click What is our technical debt?

119_WhatIsOurTechnicalDebt 

The visualization is a Gantt chart that shows the lifecycles of all applications and the components that they use. Here's how to interpret the information:

  • The first level shows Application applications. The Strategic Application column shows a checkmark if the attribute is set to Yes for the application.
  • The timeline shows a green bar visualizing the active period (start date - end date) of the application. If an application lifecycle is defined, lifecycle phases will be displayed in a multi-colored bar below the green bar:
    • App_Plan  Plan: The application has been identified and evaluated for possible use in company.
    • App_Pilot  Implementation: Activities are underway to prepare the application for production.
    • App_Production  Production: The application is being used in company.
    • App_Susnet  Sunset: The application is still available but is not intended to be used for daily work.
    • App_Plan  Read-Only: The application is no longer used but is available for reasons of documentation and compliance.
    • App_Retired  Retired: The application should no longer be used.
  • The second level shows the Component components that the application runs on. The End Date Conflict column highlights if the end date of a component will be reached before the end date of the application that depends on the component. Point to the end date conflict symbols to view a tooltip explaining the conflict.
  • The timeline shows a grey bar visualizing the period between the component's start and end dates. If a component lifecycle is defined, lifecycle phases will be displayed by a multi-colored bar below the grey bar:
    • Comp_ManSupp  Manufacturer Supported: The technology is mature and is recommended for use in a production environment.
    • Comp_ManExtSupp  Manufacturer Extended Support: The technology is still available but should be avoided for use in a production environment.
  • The blue vertical line indicates the current date.

If you have the relevant access permissions, you can edit the business capabilities and applications in this business question.

  1. Go to the business question What is our technical debt and click the  Edit edit button.
    • To change application data, select Edit Applications to open the Applications data workbench. Use the features of the data workbench to slice-and-dice your data to focus on data and do the analyses you are interested in. Or click the  Navigate navigate button to open an application's content area.
    • To change component data, select Edit Components to open the Components data workbench. Edit a component directly in the data workbench or select a component and click the  Navigate navigate button to open it's content area.
    • To specify component support for an application, click Edit  Edit > Assign Components to the Selected Application and choose the components in the selector.

Applications and components must be in the repository and well-documented. The following data is required about in order to have meaningful results for the business question What is our technical debt?:

  • Application > Used components: Specify the technological architecture of the application.
  • Application > End Date: Specify in order to plan the application lifecycle.
  • Component > End Date: Specify in order to avoid potential conflicts and risks due to end-of-life technologies.

Go to the Data Quality page and resolve the issues to ensure that the data is complete.

Go to the Data Source page to review the applications that are used to answer the business question. The data source is a list report and cannot be edited.