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Nordea’s challenge was to reduce the complexity that had evolved in its application management. This involved needing to reduce the number of registered applications in order to reduce complexity, assess the capabilities of new applications, and bring down the overall cost of running applications and application development across the bank.
The use of enterprise architecture was required to assess the IT assets and applications in relation to users’ role in the application, and in doing so, to change its AM in terms of unstructured to structured.
Nordea adopted a method where they inventoried their applications to streamline their application management. This strategy allowed the IT department to efficiently organize application processes, reducing the total applications and simplifying the introduction and management of new applications, including understanding their use and deployment to users.
This approach has helped achieve the main goal of minimizing complexity and operational costs related to application management. The initiative was driven by the need to lower expenses associated with application data maintenance, general application upkeep, and keeping application documentation up to date in an efficient manner. Additionally, it emphasized adopting best practices for managing and decommissioning applications using a metrics-based approach, benefiting not just the IT team but the entire organization.
Effective management of core IT assets was crucial for implementing comprehensive application management strategies. Through application consolidation, efforts needed for everyday management were minimized, and the accuracy of application management data was enhanced.
The process was implemented in two phases:
First, by refining the application information model to identify the necessary data for each application, including who requires it, its significance, update frequency, and responsible parties for updates—a step previously unexplored.
Second, by reducing the number of applications to streamline data for clearer understanding and decision-making.
Bringing the application portfolio into HOPEX IT Portfolio Management enabled the Nordea team to see that in some cases they were trying to manage up to 160 data points on single applications. This was clearly an unsustainable level of work and effort on each application.
This exercise enabled Nordea to see the bigger picture with application performance management. It also made it possible to truly understand its application portfolio and manage it more efficiently by consolidating the application information and labeling it in such a way that it can be more easily used.
By consolidating data from various initiatives, such as data security and GDPR, which previously were labeled differently but served the same purpose, the workload was streamlined. This consolidation reduced the high maintenance each application required and minimized repetitive manual tasks for basic administration. A data model was then created for each application, leading to the establishment of rule books for a deeper application understanding. This reorganization of the information model allowed application managers to efficiently grasp essential details like information requests, their purposes, update responsibilities, and the frequency of updates.
The result is a well-structured information model for each application. There was also a need to make the information reusable, and able to be maintained on a day-to-day basis by stakeholders.
The consolidated application repository offers several advantages, including streamlined data maintenance and analysis, a unified list of applications for evaluation and decommissioning, and improved dependency mapping. This enhances the ability to analyze impacts for future changes and manage incidents more effectively.
To ensure continuity in application management, even as architects shift to new projects, the app manager is equipped to update application data within the centralized HOPEX repository. An internal website, generated from HOPEX, facilitates communication of this updated information to stakeholders across the organization, leveraging a consistent and common information model to detail documentation for each application.
This approach ensures the reliability of application data, making it reusable for various initiatives like transformation projects, business architecture, regulatory compliance, and internal controls, fostering trust in the data’s applicability across different organizational needs.
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