Tolerate
Technically sound, little business value. Keep for now and monitor.
Insights · Enterprise architecture
Gartner TIME: assessing applications instead of collecting them
TIME assigns each application to one of four strategies: Tolerate, Invest, Migrate or Eliminate. It rests on two questions: how much does the application contribute to the business, and how sound is it technically?
The four quadrants
Every application gets a direction.
Invest
Valuable to the business and technically sound. Worth expanding.
Migrate
Valuable to the business, technically weak. Modernise or replace.
Eliminate
Convincing neither for the business nor technically. Retire.
What matters
The matrix is quickly drawn. The assessment is the work.
- Business and IT assess together: one the value, the other the technology.
- A classification is a snapshot. The portfolio is reassessed regularly.
- TIME classifies but does not prioritise. Sequence and budget need a decision of their own.
- Without interfaces the picture stays incomplete: an application can only be replaced once it is clear who depends on it.
From our project work.
At GLS Bank we assessed a grown application landscape with TIME: software and interface map, focus groups with business, IT and organisation, and finally decision papers for the executive board and steering committees.
Want to bring order to your application landscape? Architecture Advisory →
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