With a passion for replacing intuition with fact-based, objective insight the experts at CAST have published an e-book, “6 Steps to Data-Driven IT Planning and Budgeting,” to help senior leaders challenge the status quo. Through the power of software analysis and measurement, our cloud-based Application Portfolio Analysis (APA) solution CAST HIGHLIGHT automates the discovery of technical risk within an organization's portfolio. CAST HIGHLIGHT quickly surfaces systems that are difficult to maintain, excessively complex or likely to experience production failures – crucial indicators that inform budgeting decisions and unveil cost reduction opportunities. Read the eBook to learn how a research-based, automated APA solution can support the critical IT planning and budgeting process at your organization

1. 6 STEPS TO DATA-DRIVEN
IT PLANNING & BUDGETING

2. Controlling costs requires understanding
the sources of complexity.
IT has become cluttered with obsolete systems
that no longer deliver full value to the business.
What’s worse is the obsolete process by which these
systems continue to secure funding – gut feel, allocation
and squeaking wheels.
The size and complexity of the IT landscape are
increasing, yet we lack the fundamental insight into
what to do about it. As a result, myopic, subjective
processes displace a methodical, fact-based approach
to effective IT planning and budgeting.
"67% of IT budget is spent
keeping the lights on,
19% supports growth
of current business …
only 14% is allocated to
genuine transformational IT."
Dave Aron, Gartner
Jim Duggan, Gartner

3. Fractious planning is ineffective and
erodes trust between business and IT.
Source: Capgemini 2011 Application Landscape Report
Successful planning replaces gut feel
with objective, fact based analysis.
CAST HIGHLIGHT transforms IT budgeting and planning
by automating the technical discovery process and
creating insight needed to make better decisions. Using
code analysis, CAST HIGHLIGHT derives application
measures (size and complexity) as well as maintainability
and the potential for production failures. When
combined with your company’s subject matter expertise,
this data forms the insight needed to develop and
implement an effective IT plan and budget.
"Our business is rapidly
changing and it’s fair to say that
our application landscape –
both in terms of its complexity
and its lack of flexibility –
is now more an inhibitor to
innovation than a driver of it.”
Capgemini 2014 Application Landscape Report

4. 1. Establish a Baseline
Quantified assessment of the
technical quality and vulnerabilities
of the application portfolio is the
foundation for effective
decision making.
Yet a typical IT budgeting process is
subjective, manual and fraught with bias.
CAST HIGHLIGHT’s cloud platform enables
around the clock analysis of applications,
accelerating time-to-value, reducing burden
and delivering fact-based data such as key
performance indicators and industry
benchmarks.
IT PORTFOLIO TREND ANALYSIS
Establishing a baseline of key performance indicators is a foundation
for early detection of troubled systems, automated health monitoring
and objective performance measurement.

5. 2. Rationalize the Process,
Then the Portfolio
Use a disciplined approach to
identifying and eliminating
low-value applications.
The promise of reducing the size of a
portfolio and consolidating redundant
applications is rarely realized, since there
is typically a lack of reliable data that allows
for objective side-by-side comparison of
applications.
CAST HIGHLIGHT provides a standard
classification and industry benchmarks that
enable objective comparison of technical
risk and maintainability. When combined
with your subject matter expertise, this data
creates the insight needed to support
rational application decisions.
APPLICATION RATIONALIZATION
Side by side comparison of applications by key performance
indicators and business value supported by industry benchmarks.

6. 3. Level the Playing Field
IT ecosystems include outsourced and
dispersed development teams, vendor
managed applications and third-party
packaged solutions.
A cloud service, CAST HIGHLIGHT provides
a consistent, repeatable approach for
stakeholders to create fair and credible
assessments across all applications within
a single ecosystem.
All application owners contribute to the
analysis without intellectual property
risk and there is no burden on limited
resources—maximizing participation and
creating the objectivity and facts needed
to disarm bias and break through fiefdoms.
BUSINESS VALUE AT RISK
By combining automated code analysis with subject matter expertise,
CAST HIGHLIGHT identifies the technical risk of your applications to enable true
alignment between business needs and IT resourcing and planning.

7. 4. Create Visibility
True visibility into a portfolio is only
possible when all applications, not just
the top concerns, are analyzed.
Most planning processes do not scale well
and therefore focus on “critical” or “highly
visible” systems, when in most cases it is
the ‘long tail’, the many small applications,
that drain budgets and proliferate risk
across an organization.
CAST HIGHLIGHT enables all applications
to be included in the planning process –
regardless of size or political visibility. It is
through this holistic perspective and robust
reporting that CAST’s platform can generate
the views needed to quickly identify risks
and opportunities for cost reduction.
DEVELOPMENT SOURCE VS TECHNICAL RISK
CAST HIGHLIGHT provides objective measures of
applications’ technical risks by development source.

8. Technical Debt is the cost of fixing
application quality problems that,
if left unfixed, put the business at
serious risk.
Technical Debt is quickly finding its way into
ROI discussions and C-level dashboards. It
provides a financial value of application
quality problems that are highly likely to
cause business disruption and will make the
application more difficult to enhance over
time. CAST HIGHLIGHT measures Technical
Debt and benchmarks applications against
industry standards. Adding a KPI that puts
risk in financial terms helps IT partner with
business and broker mutually beneficial
plans and funding profiles.
TECHNICAL DEBT PROFILE
CAST HIGHLIGHT estimates Technical Debt of applications to help form a risk
reduction strategy based on severity and impact to the overall portfolio.
5. Shed Technical Debt

9. SOFTWARE MAINTENANCE ESTIMATE
6. Reduce Maintenance Costs
CAST HIGHLIGHT calculates an industry standard effort to maintain each application
based on the technical measures derived from the code analysis and drivers from
survey answers. This benchmark is compared against current staffing.
67% of IT budget is dedicated
to Keeping the Lights On.
As applications age, maintenance budgets
continue to outpace budget increases
and throttle an organization’s ability to
proactively pursue strategic initiatives
and react to new business opportunities
and threats.
Imagine the ability to identify applications
that are draining budgets and expose the
root cause of maintainability issues
resulting in understanding which
applications may be underfunded and
which are consuming excessive resources.

10. How Rapid Portfolio
Analysis Works
A code-level analysis of each application
calculates technical metrics such as size,
type of technology and complexity.
The evaluation determines the technical
quality of each application based on
programming rules and code patterns
that lead to production risk, poor
adaptability and complexity.
The technical assessment is combined
with input from application owners to
capture information such as staffing
profiles, functional purpose, age,
development mix and mode.
All of these data are compiled at the
portfolio level and packaged into
customized reports and charts that
support critical planning decisions
such as resource strategies, application
rationalization, outsourcing and portfolio
optimization.

11. 85% of IT executives know their
portfolios are in need of rationalization.
Knowing you need to rationalize your portfolio is much
different than proving you need to do it. Gathering
data from disparate sources and time-consuming
manual analysis and reporting amounts to suspect
insight that is unverifiable when challenged by
business leaders. Lack of convincing business cases
and unreliable intelligence significantly hinders efforts
to bring order to the chaos. This fractious process
makes planning ineffective and erodes trust between
business and IT.
Myopic, subjective,
and non-responsive
processes are no longer
acceptable.
Source: Capgemini 2011 Application Landscape Report

12. The Value of Science:
Objective, Insightful & Automated
Organizations that use CAST HIGHLIGHT:
• Shift IT investments towards business innovation
by reducing maintenance cost and operations.
• Align IT priorities and investment decisions more
effectively with the business.
• Replace bias with objective, defendable insight.
• Accelerate data collection and analysis while reaching
across boundaries to provide a full view of the IT
landscape.
• Inject facts into assessments of systems – facts that
form the basis of credible and defendable IT investment
decisions.
"CAST HIGHLIGHT is a
game-changer! A long awaited
dream of CIOs to gain ultra-quick
insight into their portfolios in a
simple and secure manner.“
Hari Thalapalli - Tech Mahindra

13. CAST is helping clients across the globe rapidly gain
unprecedented insight into their portfolios every
day. Whether you are in the middle of a budgeting
process or ramping up for one, you can’t afford to
make decisions based on limited visibility and gut feel.
Try the CAST HIGHLIGHT demo!
www.casthighlight.com/demo