Application Portfolio Assessment Template
A fill-in assessment for one application in the estate — business fitness, technical fitness, cost, risk and the disposition decision (invest, tolerate, migrate, eliminate) with the evidence behind it.
Markdown. No sign-up, no email.
One per application. The output of a portfolio review is not a diagram of everything; it is a defensible decision about each thing, with the evidence attached.
Fill the cost and usage rows with measurements. A portfolio review built on opinion produces a roadmap that the first budget conversation dismantles.
Application: _______________ Business owner: _______________ Technical owner: _______________ Assessed by: _______________ Date: _______
1. What it does#
| Business capability supported | |
| One-sentence description | |
| Users (number, type) | |
| Usage measured how | |
| Business criticality | critical / important / routine |
| Regulatory relevance |
If it were switched off tomorrow, who would call, and how quickly? _______________
2. Business fitness (1–5)#
| Dimension | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Meets current business need | ||
| Users would choose it if given an alternative | ||
| Supports where the business is going | ||
| Data in it is trusted | ||
| Process it supports is still how we work |
Business fitness total: ____ / 25
3. Technical fitness (1–5)#
| Dimension | Score | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Platform and runtime still vendor-supported | ||
| Can be changed safely (tests, environments, deploy path) | ||
| Integrations are documented and stable | ||
| Skills exist in-house | ||
| Security posture (patching, authentication, logging) | ||
| Recoverable — backup tested |
Technical fitness total: ____ / 30
🔴 Any score of 1 on "vendor-supported" or "recoverable" is a finding in its own right, whatever the totals say. Do not let an average hide an unsupported platform holding regulated data.
4. Cost#
| Annual | |
|---|---|
| Licences | |
| Infrastructure | |
| Support and maintenance contract | |
| Internal effort (FTE × cost) | |
| Total cost of ownership |
Cost per user / per transaction: _______________ Cost trend over three years: _______________
5. Risk#
| Risk | Present | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Unsupported operating system, runtime or database | yes / no | |
| Single person understands it | yes / no | |
| No test environment | yes / no | |
| Cannot be restored (untested backups) | yes / no | |
| Holds personal or regulated data | yes / no | |
| Vendor viability concern | yes / no | |
| Undocumented integrations | yes / no |
Key-person dependency named: _______________
6. Overlap#
Other applications in the estate doing something similar: _______________
Why both exist: _______________
Duplication is usually historical rather than deliberate — an acquisition, a department that bought its own, a project that stopped halfway. Recording the reason is what makes consolidation a decision rather than an argument.
7. Disposition — pick one#
| Decision | Meaning | Chosen |
|---|---|---|
| Invest | High business fitness, high technical fitness. Fund improvement | |
| Tolerate | High business, low technical. Keep, contain the risk, do not extend | |
| Migrate | Low business, high technical. Move the capability elsewhere | |
| Eliminate | Low on both. Retire |
Decision: _______________ Rationale, in two sentences: _______________ Estimated effort: _______________ Dependency: what must happen first: _______________ Earliest realistic date: _______
"Tolerate" is a legitimate decision and the most commonly avoided one. Naming it explicitly — with a containment action and a review date — is far better than a roadmap that quietly claims everything will be modernised.
8. If eliminating or migrating#
- [ ] Data retention requirement identified (how long, in what form)
- [ ] Archive plan and format agreed
- [ ] Consumers of its data or interfaces identified and told
- [ ] Licences to cancel, with notice periods
- [ ] Decommission date agreed and recorded
- [ ] Someone owns the shutdown
9. Sign-off#
| Name | Date | |
|---|---|---|
| Assessor | ||
| Business owner agrees with disposition | ||
| Architecture review | ||
| Review due again |