Application category and business services

[Amy16]

Hi,

We are a higher education school in the process of setting up an EA practice using APM. We are trying to stick as close to CSDM 3.0 as possible. We are currently stuck on setting up categories. The original proposal was to match our business services as close as possible, however, as we were workshopping what that would actually mean we realized that having them the same was not getting us the data we needed for application rationalization.  

The question: What sources did you use to start the foundation of the application categories and application category groups? How closely or tightly should these be tied with Business Services?

Thanks,

Amy

[Doron Orbach]

Hi Amy,

Usually the categories would be closely related to your industry, and the category structure is usually arbitrary and unique per organization created for rationalization purposes. 

you can find some good info on grouping applications (though not specific categories) here:

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=8eb947e5db5cdbc01dcaf3231f96199f

Ultimately the goal of application categorization is to group applications performing the same function together so that you can rationalize away redundancy. One thing to be careful about is that you are not categorizing the applications by your organizational structure but instead by the function or capability that the app is providing. An extension of this is making sure that your business applications are broken down by function. For example, it is better not to have just one ServiceNow business application because it is such a broad platform. Instead it is better to break it down to the specific capabilities it provides, and have several business applications to show each capability/function, like ServiceNow APM, ServiceNow HR, ServiceNow ITSM etc. That way if you compare redundant applications you can score the applications against those functions.

Thanks,

Doron