1.1 Play 1: Determine the application’s future lifespan

Before modernizing any legacy application, it is crucial to understand how long the application will remain in service and under what conditions, to ensure modifications produce a prudent mission value and return on investment (ROI) balance. It is essential for the application or product owner to provide requirements and constraints that direct the effort. Currently, DoD services are rationalizing their application portfolios for mission effectiveness and cost efficiency. This is leading to applications being subsumed by other applications, applications being retired, applications being refactored and deployed to cloud environments, and other portfolio consolidation approaches.

Checklist

• Identify the application modernization project’s champion, the application owner that believes in the value of the endeavor.

• Obtain and document the application’s future lifespan from the application owner.

  • Gather application modernization requirements and constraints from the application or product owner.

    • If not documented, document these requirements in a formal manner, have it reviewed by the application or product owner, and place under configuration management.

      • This application modernization requirements document should contain: application portfolio information, application rationalization information, application lifespan forecast including dates, requirements list, requirements analysis, other pertinent information that will help when determining the best modernization course of action (COA).

• Develop a (lean) communication plan to keep application owner, product owner, and stakeholders apprised of important project and related information.

Key Questions

• How long will the modernized application be in service?
• Are there unique application mission or technical constraints that must be addressed?

• Will the application be subsumed by another application in the future?

  • If so, when, and what is the technical plan for subsuming?
  • What limitations does this place on the modernization solution?