Avoiding the Duplicate Application Trap
By Duncan Haughey
Have you ever wondered how much time and money is being spent by businesses developing or purchasing duplicate software applications just because they do not know they already exist somewhere else in the organisation. Experience and research suggests that a large proportion of IT budgets (particularly in large decentralised organisations) is spent on unnecessary duplication. What if this money was put to better use elsewhere or used to improve the quality of what is being developed?
A blue-chip company I worked for had just this problem, developing at least five room booking systems of varying quality. For the money spent, they could have developed or purchased one world-class system.
The problem is that many organisations do not have the information about their IT inventory documented and available, so remain unaware of the extent of the problem. In order to address this, three distinct areas need to be considered:
- Availability of information
- Approval process
- Cultural change
Without information about what IT development projects are producing, then organisations will continue to reinvent the wheel, largely unaware of the wasted IT budget. What is needed is an Application Inventory accessible by everyone to give visibility of the organisations application portfolio. In conjunction with the inventory, a good approval process will ensure that projects are not started where a viable reuse alternative is available. Cultural change is required so that it becomes common practice, before proposing or starting a project, to ask 'what already exists?' To support this there needs to be more kudos for reusing or modifying existing applications than creating new ones.
Application Inventory
Creating an application inventory is no easy task, but a necessary first step in avoiding duplication. There are two useful approaches that can be employed, architectural or project based.
Taking the architectural approach means mapping all your applications, business processes and technologies. Each time a new application is developed or purchased it is added to the inventory with information such as what it does, who the internal customer is and the technology it uses.
Using the project based approach means building up information about applications from project data supplied by the organisations project managers. The ideal scenario is where this information is derived from the organisations project and portfolio management systems, keeping the overhead for collecting the data to a minimum.
Once you have created your inventory, it is important to make it available - web sites and web-based applications are an ideal way of making information easily accessible.
Approval Process
The stage and gate methodology is a very effective process for evaluating project proposals by passing them through a series of gates to assess their value and relevance to the organisation. Unlike many traditional methodologies, where a project is approved at the beginning of its life and then runs unhindered to a conclusion, the stage and gate methodology is used to assess a project at several points during its life. This way the organisation confirms that the expected benefits are still relevant and that the project will still deliver good value. If not, it can be stopped before its conclusion, saving money and allowing resources to be used to greater effect elsewhere.
- The Concept Gate gives visibility of planned projects and an opportunity to identify areas of actual or potential duplication
- The Decision Gates are Charter, Contract and Rollout these are 'go/no-go' gates
- The Quality Gate is the Launch Gate which is used to check quality and completeness
- Not all decisions are at Gates - there will be exceptions
Checking for existing suitable applications should be part of the project approval process at the concept or charter gate, supported by your gatekeepers (approvers) and project support office.
Cultural Change
Many organisations suffer from the 'not invented here' syndrome. Generally, developers like to invent and are not keen on reuse. In this situation, people spend more time justifying why they cannot use an existing application than why they can.
Ideally, customers should be able to review the organisations application inventory to see what exists that meets their needs before proposing a project. More realistically, the project manager when given the project will do this. There needs to be more kudos for reusing or modifying existing applications than creating new ones. A useful phrase to describe this is 'steal with pride.' Reuse is not stealing as long as you do not infringe copyright or licensing agreements.
The benefits of application reuse are:
- Higher quality (a tried and tested solution)
- Less rework (bugs already encountered and removed)
- Lower cost (specified changes and configuration work only)
- Shorter duration (a large proportion of the customer requirements already met)
- Greater customer satisfaction (less bugs, issues and the route to a faster solution)
- Simplification (less complexity in the organisations application portfolio)
Here are some of the steps organisations can take to reduce duplication:
- Create an application inventory - map all your applications, business processes and technologies
- Make the inventory available on your Intranet for easy access
- Avoid the "not invented here" syndrome by positively encouraging and rewarding reuse
- Implement a project approval process and use it to identify and eliminate duplication
- Use your project support office and gatekeepers to support and if necessary enforce the initiative
It will take time and effort to make this work within your organisation, but be patient the rewards can be significant.
