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.

Application portfolios are defined in Alfabet via application groups that bundle applications. An application group may have multiple subordinate application groups. 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

  business process

  A business process is an activity or set of activities that represent work required to accomplish a specific organizational objective. Marketing services, selling products, delivering services, distributing products, invoicing for services, and accounting for money received are examples of business processes.

• the organizations that the applications support

  organization

  An organization is a business-driven governance structure such as an administrative or functional unit in the company.

• 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

Alfabet 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. Analysis is based on preconfigured indicators used to evaluate the applications as well as business questions to help you understand the use, performance, and criticality of the application portfolio in the IT landscape.

Add application groups to the repository

You can add a new application group from anywhere in the product via the orange New button in the header. Or go to Application Architecture > Application Groups:

• 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 Overview > Subordinate Application Groups view. Click 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 Overview > Subordinate Application Groups view. Click 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.
• Navigate to the application group's content area.Click the Navigate   button next to an application to open its content area. Specify the application group's attributes as well as the relationships that the application has to other assets in the repository.

Specify the application group's basic data

Once an application group is in the repository, you can define more details about the application groups in the Application Groups data workbench . Or you can select an individual application group and navigate to its content area and specify and analyze the application in detail. In the data workbench, click the Navigate   button to open the application group's content area. Go to the Overview page.

data workbench

A data workbench is a data table that allows you to capture, edit, and understand large amounts of data.

content area

A content area is a view with a collection of tabbed pages. Each page may have multiple content items such as cards and views. Every asset has a content area where the asset's attributes can be defined as well as other relevant views to capture information.

• 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.
• 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.
• Parent Application Group: Specify the application group that is the parent of this application group in the application group hierarchy.
• Description: Provide information about the application group so that other users understand its purpose.
• 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.

  authorized user

  An authorized user has primary responsibility to maintain the data for an object. Typically this is the user that has created the object. The authorized user as well as members of authorized user groups have write permissions to objects they are responsible for.

  authorized user group

  An authorized user group is a set of users that have been granted write permissions to an object. More than one authorized user group may be specified for an object.