Run book 5 of 5
Cadence and roadmap
The assessment is done when every application has a plan — and the practice is working when that stays true next quarter without a second heroic push.
1 Confirm the populated portfolio Every assessed application has an owner, scores, a TIME placement, and a PAID action.
IT lead and BRM team
- Review the portfolio on the App Health tab across every unit assessed this cycle — the TIME and PAID charts side by side, with filters to isolate each quadrant.
- Remember what the quadrants are: derived. TIME comes from Business Fit against Technical Health; PAID (Plan, Address, Ignore, Delay) from Impact (business criticality) against Risk (technical exposure). Nobody hand-picks a quadrant — if a placement looks wrong, revisit the underlying scores.
- Sweep the leftovers: the Needs Assessment filter shows what's incomplete; the ownership roll-up shows what's unowned.
Done when: Leadership can see the whole assessed portfolio, and nothing in scope is unscored or unowned.
2 Turn placements into a roadmap Every application that needs action has a roadmap item with an owner and a time horizon.
IT lead, with application owners
- On the Roadmap tab, capture intent as Initiatives — each with a priority, a strategic theme (Optimize / Growth / Risk), and a quarterly horizon (Q1 through Q4, or Beyond).
- Work the quadrants in order: Address items first, then Plan; Modernize applications get their path-forward initiative; Eliminate applications get a retirement initiative.
- Attach the money where it's known — initiative price for one-time cost, run-rate impact for the ongoing change, marked Forecast until it's Committed.
- View it your way: Ledger for the money story and Grid for the working list — and on Enterprise, Gantt for the timeline and Kanban for status.
Done when: Per-application roadmap items exist for everything the assessment says needs action.
3 Report to leadership Leadership has the portfolio view and the plan — in their language.
IT lead
- Lead with the Overview tab: portfolio coverage, the TIME & PAID summary, and what's in motion.
- Show spend against structure on the IT Spend tab — where the money goes by application, vendor, portfolio, and renewal month.
- Export what the meeting needs: portfolio and roadmap data go out as CSV or Excel.
- Name the decisions you're asking for — every Eliminate placement is a decision, not a fact, until leadership agrees.
Done when: Leadership has seen the portfolio, the plan, and the asks.
4 Start the quarterly cadence The portfolio stays current by design — day two is solved by rhythm, not heroics.
IT lead and BRM team
- Set the next quarterly review date with each business unit before this cycle's momentum fades.
- Each quarter: rescore what changed, sweep new applications in, re-confirm owners (the attestation loop tracks who confirmed what, and when it's due again).
- Watch movement over time — cost history snapshots keep each application's PAID action per snapshot, so 'this moved from Delay to Address in Q2' is a story the data tells.
- Update roadmap initiatives as Forecast becomes Committed becomes Realized — the quarterly review is where the ledger gets honest.
Done when: The next review is on the calendar for every unit, and the portfolio is being maintained, not rebuilt.
This is where application rationalization actually happens — not as a one-time project, but as the natural output of a portfolio the organization keeps current. The clarity sustains; the financial outcomes follow.
Take the kit with you
The Workshop Kit bundles every handout in this guide — question sets, email templates, the one-pager, and printable run books — plus the full playbook.