Software system rationalisation: How to get better outcomes through stronger user engagement

As businesses get more sizable and more mature they now, inevitably accrete more and more software systems. This estate expansion leads not only to greater complexity and expense for the enterprise, but also to fragmentation, inconsistency and siloing of business processes. Because platform rationalisation and system decommissioning never happens spontaneously, a perennial problem for the enterprise then becomes how to simplify their corporate software platforms. Recently, Curlew Research personnel were involved in a software rationalisation program within a large global life sciences company and this paper describes an approach to decommissioning which we developed as part of that project, and which we feel could be of use more widely to help with objective more user-centric system rationalisation. The method derives from a model developed by Noriaki Kano et al to help with determining customer satisfaction and loyalty, and the prioritisation of new, additional functionality, features or "products", for example when looking to enhance software applications. Using a blueprint process for rationalisation, the Curlew-Kano method enables each application to be placed efficiently and objectively into one of four categories - Retain; Review; Remove; Research - thus allowing the enterprise to identify and prioritise quickly those systems which warrant further investigation as part of a decommissioning activity. The key difference of the Curlew-Kano method compared to other application rationalisation methodologies is the fundamental involvement of users in the identification of systems more suitable for rationalisation and possible decommissioning. In our view involving users more fully in system rationalisation leads to better outcomes for the enterprise.