Using Application Portfolio Management

Learn how to use the features of Application Portfolio Management to identify business applications inventory, measure the applications by gathering metrics, evaluate the usage, and decide to maintain, replace, or retire the applications.

• Add or edit a business application
  Use the Business application form to add the applications that your organization uses based on their functions and the business processes they fulfill. In APM, add any business application that is used to assess and track costs, usage, business value, functional fitment, and risks.
• View business application roadmap
  Use the graphical, high-level overview of the application roadmap to view the investments made in the business application.
• Associate suggested technology models to an application service
  As an application owner, you can run the software model suggestions engine to fetch software models. These models can be related to an application service instead of mapping them manually.
• Assess business capability
  Assess the business capabilities within the indicator framework and based on the score you can make strategic decisions on the business applications that support the business capability.
• Create business capability and relate the capability with an application
  Business capabilities are the abilities of an organization to do an activity to fulfill its business goals. Align your organization goals with business capabilities by creating capabilities.
• Use capability map for planning
  Capability-based planning helps you to understand your business capabilities, and the business applications that support them, to achieve your business goals.
• View technology risks in timeline
  View the internal and external life-cycle phases of all technologies or the product models that are used in your organization in the Technology Portfolio Management timeline. You can identify the stages at which the technology is, in terms of the risk factor by their color code.
• Relate business application to application service using CI relationship editor
  Business applications can have multiple instances. Application instances are nothing but application services. Relate business applications to instances by relating business applications to application services. Business application and application service are two different configuration items which must be related through a CI relationship.
• Associate an application service to hardware model
  Track your equipment assets such as computers and servers using hardware models.
• Associate an application service to a software model
  Business applications have multiple instances such as development, QA, and production. Instances are nothing but application services. Application services must be associated with software models (to the respective full versions) to know the risk of the application service.
• Create a risk parameter
  The risk on a software model is calculated based on four preconfigured parameters such as external aging risk, internal aging risk, external stage risk, and internal stage risk.
• Create or edit an architectural artifact
  Create or edit an architectural artifact to align it with your business requirements.
• Associate an artifact to a business entity
  Associate an architectural artifact to existing elements in the ServiceNow AI Platform, such as business capabilities or business applications. The association creates a relationship between the artifact and related entities.
• Create or edit an artifact category
  Create  or edit an artifact category. Assign the category to an architectural artifact. Categories enable you to categorize and manage artifacts more efficiently.
• Create an artifact version
  Create multiple versions of the architectural artifacts and send for approval. There can be only one approved version for each artifact.
• Download an artifact version
  Download an approved artifact version to view the architectural diagram in it.
• Request approval for an artifact version
  Send an architectural artifact version for approval to an Enterprise Architect user. The user reviews and approves the request.
• Approve or reject an artifact version request
  As an Enterprise Architect, create, edit, and approve or reject architectural artifacts version requests that are submitted by other users.
• Approve architecture review requests
  You can approve an architecture review request if you are part of the Enterprise Architect Group.
• Create a diagram for a business application
  Create a diagram in for your business application hierarchy and associate it with an architectural artifact. Use the ServiceNow Enterprise Modeling and Visualization or Lucidchart to create a diagram for your business hierarchy.
• Create a Lucid diagram for a business capability
  Create a diagram in Lucidchart for your business capability maps and associate it with an architectural artifact.
• Use Business Application Lifecycle Management to request or retire an application
  If you are an APM user, you should use the Business Application Lifecycle Management services to request or register a new business application for your business. You can request a business application like you place an order for any other service catalog item.
• Manage Business Application Lifecycle Management service requests
  You can approve requests raised by an APM user either for a new business application or retire an application that the user no longer requires.
• Use Business Application Lifecycle Management to request an architecture review
  You can request a review of your new architecture design proposal on the technology of a business application by presenting it to the architecture review board.
• Create or edit an indicator to assess an application
  Application indicators are business metrics that assess the applications across dimensions such as cost, quality, technical risk, investments, user satisfaction, and business value.
• Create an application score profile and attach profile indicators
  You can create an application score profile and update the default application profile with new profile indicators per your requirements. After you create a score profile, you have to associate it with indicators.
• View application indicator scores
  View the application indicator scores that are sourced and computed based on the sourcing setup defined for the application indicators. The assessment framework calculates the score only for those indicators which are attached to at least one scoring profile. The indicator scores help you to evaluate the applications and make strategic decisions on them.
• View all application scores
  View the application scores that are computed as a weighted sum of the application indicators on the application scoring profile. The application scores help to evaluate the applications and make strategic decisions on them.
• Analyze application scores in a bubble chart
  Bubble charts are interactive graphs that help you identify strategies by plotting application indicator scores. You can evaluate applications for a category and decide whether to invest, sustain, or to replace an application by configuring multiple combinations of indicators in the bubble chart.
• Monitor performance, costs, and workloads in Application 360
  Application 360 dashboard performs as a reporting tool and uses Performance Analytics to provide a decision-making approach to Application Portfolio Management by identifying which business application requires focus and attention. The dashboard helps you to analyze the indicator scores and execute effective decisions.
• Assess the performance of applications in the dashboard
  Use the Application Assessments dashboard for an overview of reports on the performance of the business applications. The spline chart gives you a trend of the application indicators against the normalized value over different quarters in a fiscal period.
• Create a goal for an application strategy
  After assessing the applications and deciding on strategies, set concrete goals to maximize or minimize depending on the indicators for the selected fiscal period.
• Create a demand towards achievement of goal
  Use a demand as a step to identify cost saving opportunities on the applications and to meet the target. The strategy that you associate with the demand action decides the strategy for the application.
• Create a program for an application goal
  Create a program, link it to the goal that you created, and associate a program manager to the program. After you create a goal, you should have a program to achieve the goal that you created.
• Create a guided plan to execute a program
  Create a guided plan by setting goals, identifying opportunities, creating demands, and tracking the projects. The guided plan helps you to implement the program that you created.
• Add a TRM product
  As an Enterprise Architect, you can add a new TRM product to the TRM library.
• Add or edit a TRM product request
  Add a new request or edit an existing request to include a new software or hardware product to the TRM library.
• Add or edit a TRM product lifecycle request
  Add a new request or edit an existing request to create a lifecycle for a TRM product.
• Request a TRM product using the TRM Catalog
  Request a TRM product using the TRM catalog to add a new software to the TRM library.
• Request a TRM product lifecycle using the TRM Catalog
  Request a TRM product lifecycle using the TRM catalog to add the lifecycle for a TRM product.
• Approve or reject a TRM product or product lifecycle request
  As an Enterprise Architect, approve or reject a TRM product version request submitted by other users.
• Add or edit a TRM category
  Add a new request or edit an existing request to create a TRM category.
• View and edit your product requests
  View all your product requests, track their statuses, and edit your existing requests. You can also manage the approvers for your request.
• View and edit your product lifecycle requests
  View all your product lifecycle requests, track their status, and edit your existing requests. You can also manage the approvers for your request.
• Add or edit a TRM phase
  Define your own TRM phase or edit an existing TRM phase.
• Review the TRM lifecycle status in the Technology Portfolio Management page
  View the TRM lifecycle information along with the risk and technical debt information in the Technology Portfolio Management page.
• Configure the business application form for risk management
  Configure the business application form to enable application managers to provide risk and control information associated with a business application through a risk assessment questionnaire or a control attestation survey.
• Respond to a risk assessment questionnaire
  Respond to a risk questionnaire to provide risk-related information for your business application to a risk manager.
• Take the control attestation survey
  Return the control attestation survey to provide information to verify that a control is implemented for a business application.
• Create a data domain
  Data domain is a collection of information objects. Relate an information object to the database catalog of a database instance to collect the physical data. ServiceNow Discovery finds database catalog that lists all the catalog objects, or databases, discovered for an instance of a database.
• Create an information object referencing data domain
  Create an information object to capture the logical data for the business application. This data becomes information when it is applied to the business application.
• Relate a business application to an information object
  Relate a business application to an information object using the CI relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] table of type Uses::Used by. Use this suggested relationship to get the logical data of the information object, which can be used to leverage the business application.
• Relate the information object to the database catalog
  The information object draws the physical data from the database catalog, which references the database instances. Hence, create a relationship that is suggested between the information object and the database catalog.
• Relate a business application to another business application
  Relate a business application to another business application using the CI relationship [cmdb_rel_ci] table of type Interfaced by::Interfaces. Use this suggested relationship to get the information of other business applications, which are interfaced with the business application.
• Visualize APM reports using CMDB Query Builder
  APM uses CMDB Query Builder to query on a list of configuration items used in Application Portfolio Management and visualize them as reports.
• Export data to Microsoft PowerPoint
  Export the Application Portfolio Status data to Microsoft PowerPoint. Share the data with other stakeholders in the organization, like business owners, managers and solution architects.
• Connect a digital interface with CMDB API in APM
  Create a relationship between a digital interface and a CMDB API. Use this relationship to find out the digital integration and API connection details and view the APIs that are created from the design specs of the digital interface. You can also find out the environments where the APIs are deployed, and group them as required.