Application portfolio diagrams

Where the IT spend actually goes.

A treemap of an application estate, sized by cost and coloured by whatever decision you are trying to make: lifecycle stage, business criticality, rationalisation target. It answers the question executives actually ask, which is not "how does it work" but "what are we spending this on, and on what".

When to use these

Rationalisation programmes, where the argument is about which applications to retire.
Any conversation about IT spend with a non-technical audience.
Capability mapping, where coverage and duplication are the point.

When not to

Anything about how a single system works. This is a portfolio view, not an architecture one.

Common mistakes

A treemap with no consistent sizing metric is decoration. Decide whether area means annual cost, licence count or headcount before you draw it, and say so on the diagram.

The 1 template

Application Portfolio.puml

Applications sized by spend, grouped by domain.

Show the source

@startea
Title("Application portfolio")
Measure(cost, "Annual run cost", "£k")
Size(cost)
Colour(disposition)

Capability(cust, "Customer & Distribution") {
  Capability(sales, "Sales & Quoting") {
    App("Quote Engine", cost=1240, disposition=invest, crit=5, health=4)
    App("Broker Portal", cost=890, disposition=invest, crit=4, health=4)
    App("Campaign Manager", cost=260, disposition=migrate, crit=2, health=2)
  }
  Capability(svc, "Servicing") {
    App("Customer Portal", cost=1120, disposition=invest, crit=5, health=4)
    App("Contact Centre Desktop", cost=1680, disposition=migrate, crit=5, health=2)
  }
}

Capability(policy, "Policy & Underwriting") {
  Capability(admin, "Policy Administration") {
    App("Policy Admin Core", cost=4820, disposition=migrate, crit=5, health=1)
    App("Legacy Policy Ledger", cost=1360, disposition=eliminate, crit=4, health=1)
  }
  Capability(uw, "Underwriting") {

The rest of this template, and how to use it

Render these offline

Every template here ships in Gnomon and renders on your machine, with no account and nothing sent to a server. The browser editor is free and needs no install.

Get Gnomon Open the browser editor