Application rationalization SOP

Purpose

Give the organization an evidence-backed TIME (Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, Eliminate) decision for every application in the portfolio, so duplicate spend and expired licenses get found and acted on rather than carried forward another year.

Scope

Applies to every application in the software inventory in scope for portfolio management, across every business unit and category covered by the asset management policy.

Roles

• Portfolio manager — runs the rationalization, pulls the inventory, scores each app, and drafts the TIME table and savings summary.
• App owners — confirm their app's cost, users, and data held, and respond to duplicate and eliminate findings for their apps.
• Finance partner — checks the stated savings range and confirms budget impact.
• Architecture — reviews duplicate pairs and Migrate decisions for technical dependencies before they're approved.

Frequency

A full rationalization every year, plus a lighter pass before each budget cycle. Re-run sooner after a merger or acquisition adds a new estate to reconcile.

Steps

1. Pull the inventory with owner, category, cost, and user count for every app; list gaps as Unverified: XW-001 XW-002
2. Chase missing owners or costs before scoring starts XW-026
3. Identify duplicate applications by category and function, reporting each pair once XW-011
4. Check licenses against the checked_on date for expiry and over-buying XW-007 XW-008
5. Score each app for business value and technical fit, stating the scoring used XW-011
6. Assign Tolerate, Invest, Migrate, or Eliminate with reasons; for duplicate pairs, recommend which app to keep XW-011
7. State savings as a range, not a promise, and have the finance partner check it XW-012
8. Check vendor contract terms with architecture before any eliminate decision is acted on XW-013
9. Raise a retirement plan for each eliminate decision XW-009 XW-010
10. Identify the data held by each retiring or migrating app and agree its disposition — archive, migrate, or delete, with a retention period — with the data owner XW-010 XW-028
11. Record the decisions and approvers before the rationalization is filed XW-020

Evidence to retain

• The dated inventory used, with gaps flagged.
• The duplicate pairs found and the keep/retire recommendation for each.
• The license check results, including expired and over-entitled licenses.
• The TIME table with the scoring and reasoning behind each decision.
• The data disposition agreed for each retiring or migrating app, and who agreed it.
• The finance partner's confirmation of the savings range and architecture's review of duplicate and Migrate decisions.

Related

• Governance framework crosswalk (crosswalk)
• ITAM maturity check (itam-maturity)
• AI system intake and risk tiering (ai-intake)
• Access review pack (access-review)
• Stand up a governance program (program-setup)