[Music] hello everyone I'm John ly and this is Enterprise agility podcast today we're joined by agile evangelist for Champlain and product success leader Mar Casto who will further elaborate on the different lenses of technical debt and how application portfolio management plays a crucial part in addressing this complex Enterprise issue Mark if we look at the overall digital application life cycle that drives Enterprise architecture activities for example the toaf ADC or application development um life cycle what are the foundational activities that we can use to manage technical debt yeah hey Fred and and everybody thanks for listening so um if you want to be able to manage technical debt you got to know what your systems are you got to know who owns them you got to know what they're comprised of it's about visibility so your your foundational tools understanding what you have if you don't what you've got is unidentified technical debt and that's the nightmares that creep up on you in the dark so first and foremost um APM in in service now we're all about visibility and by the way it's visibility from the highest concepts of business capability what your your systems are doing what your company does all the way down to the plugin the wall of a server in in in a data center we can connect that full picture and so that's our our first line of defense is building this model of not only the the design level the conceptualization that's what we do in in inert in APM but then we're tied in natively in the platform to operations to the cmdb so we have full visibility starting with that I can be begin to understand and qualify and quantify where my technical debt exists which is everything's technical Deb but you have to if it if it provides enough value and the the value equation of debt you know versus your your business value get more value out of it it's worth having so that's it's a simple transaction but you got to know where it is or you're you're just blind it's great Mark and and my my experience is is when we think about Transformations and and really the agility uh that we're looking for when we do a digital transformation sometimes in and is part of a larger business transformation is not seeing um the connections and dependency exactly how many really key yeah Fred how many times have you heard somebody they're talking about some sort of transformation they're saying well we don't know who all uses this information that's right oh my God I mean yes I mean it happens it happens through the very best of us um and it creeps up on you but the if you have to say I don't know I don't know what this system is built out of I don't even know who owns this system you're at risk and so you're first stage of technical Deb is that you know you got to know what you have yeah and and so yeah I've seen where there's there's really deep um dependencies that just aren't modeled or or or haven't been documented or worse over time changes have been done uh through maintenance or minor enhancements that for one reason or another just didn't get wrappered in or aren't obvious uh even if they're they're documented sometimes it just doesn't make it into the Repository and and we really have lost track of that so when we think about technical debt there's a lot of different aspects to that um ultimately it all translates into some level of business risk um Mark within APM how do how does APM help customers manage that risk um what what are the things that that we provide what what do um Architects do to to manage that risk that first thing it's it's the model that's visibility right you're building a model um inserts now we call your Enterprise systems I try to avoid the word application because it has so many different connotations a business application that's an Enterprise System it's an abstract notion you have distinct individual deployments of these those we have a name for those let's call them systems um so the business applications we have unique deployments deployments are connected via What We Gather in the cmdb so it's connected not only to operations but to the physical world and so I have that view from this enterprise system all the way down through its individual deployments and the infrastructure and services and and even the information that makes it up we have a model for the information architecture so I can understand using APM where I am where I'm starting from that I have a a foundation for my digital transformation I might be looking at Cloud I might be looking at looking for duplication of functionality um these are these are all valid things but it starts with having that model of what we have what it does how healthy is it via all of the other parts of the platform itm function GRC functions they give me the the the picture of the the health of these systems um then the next level is I can start through these connections I can evaluate technical risk um we have the spec specific means by which we address technical risk in and I mean technology the component technology risk which is just one kind of technical dep we have two functions in service now the first is identifying the with the tool set to help you identify and manage the set of hardware and software technical components the software that you allow to be used no company in its right mind in these days will allow employees developers or whatever to install whatever they want that's a that's a formula for disaster so your your we call it trm technology ology reference model but it's it's it's technology standards so you can identify the products that are approved evaluated typically Enterprise architect is a Persona that's doing that um and we do it for both Hardware software software can be um infrastructure Enterprise level software or it can be desktop software everything falls needs to fall under your technical standards so now we know what we say you can use and we govern at the version level this version is good up until next year at that point you got a sunset you got to get off of it you're going to recommended transition to this next version or a whole another product um so Mark right right there is a great um uh having application portfolio management together with it Asset Management right is a great I think Asset Management has this wonderful thing the Content Library so if you're going to Define your Technologies you you don't want to just have to go type it in and make it up or use some old spreadsheets you want to have a nice validated list so Content Library it brings in um currently we're at roughly 400,000 different software products these are is it every product in the world no it's not nobody's going to be perfect but it is a really robust set and by and large we do have the most common ones and it's got methods methodologies processes to add to it if there's something you use it's not in there if you're one of our customers our itam it Asset Management customers you got a way that you can request you say hey I need this we're running it here's the versions here's the vendor they'll go figure it out and they'll bring it back to you but that so we create our standards then the next thing we do is what I call the as built view we have the analysis by looking at what's in that cmdp you know we talked about how we're connected to the deployments we're getting those deployments bring together our mapped our term is service mapping those deployed services are mapped to the infrastructure we Analyze That and discover in a fact the technologies that are being used or maybe if you're not using them but if it's on if you have some software on a server and there's other software on that same server that other software potentially is a risk to you we bring it all back and we record it we roll that up to not only the the deployed instance the the application Service as we call it but also to the business application so that you can manage strategically as an IT owner you're working on your next physical year you look at the software that is nearing end of life or you look at things that we evaluate this all of this next against the trm and that's where we actually create records we call technical Deb um software ending nearing end of life is technical Deb it's just one of the flavors of technical debt but we have a table that we call it and so we record that and and identify the unauthorized use of Technologies so that's the these are that's one of the key functionalities that we do that's extremely popular with our customers Mark that's a fantastic overview of of really the the life cycle if you will of identification and and understanding and and inventor um of applications um Services uh to to manage uh within APM so uh let's wrap this segment Mark that's fantastic and uh we'll come back with a little bit more around technical how we manage risk so thank you very much Mark sounds good thank you Fred [Music]