Roadmap: How to Determine Application Modernization Strategy
This road map describes how to determine the Application Modernization practice.
Main Description

Getting Started

Determine application modernization strategy requires agreement at the appropriate level that control application development, maintenance, deployment and distribution. Not all applications in a given organization have similar control structure. It is common for stake holders to have no direct control over the application.

This practice describes typical approach to determine application modernization strategy.

1. Plan and prepare the Assessment
     1.1. Establish the Assessment team
     1.2. Conduct the executive session
     1.3. Coordinate with the sponsor 
     1.4. Deliver an Assessment Survey
2. Application Discovery
     2.1. Inventory Application code
     2.2. Prepare the findings
     2.3. Present and deliver the findings
3. Modernization road map
     3.1. Conduct SME Workshop
     3.2. Conduct Analysis
     3.3. Prepare road map strategy alternatives recommended modernization strategy
     3.4. Present and deliver application modernization road map

This practice is a good starting point that provides some basic steps to determine application modernization strategy. Multiple or more complex application (such as application contains large number of 3rd party parts or application sharing multiple components with other applications) might need additional steps and detail analysis of more than a single application before a strategy can be developed. However, consider starting with this basic set, and then adding additional applications analysis to the mix as needed.

Common Pitfalls

Scope: It is important to distinguish between core application and its environment. To determine application modernization strategy this practice will take the application environment into account. However, its scope is limited to the determine modernization strategy of the core application and not its sounding environment. In some cases significant effort will be required to filter the core application functionality from its surrounding environment.

Shared components: Application can share large section of the code with other applications for functional or efficiency reasons. This can increase the scope of analysis beyond a given application. Decision will be required to take on additional analysis or treat common code as black box depending on the shared code and given application. Typically third party code can be treated as black box.

Uninterested staff: This practice is fairly non-invasive in that it only requires very little time from most project teams. If they insist that team members do not have any time to spend on this effort, then this is an indicator that the project or organization is in trouble. It's even more critical to build the right solution and right plan, based on input from the projects. Assure the staff that this will use their time as effectively as possible during the interviews. In worst case it is important to inform the stake holders that this can affect outcome.