Identify fact sheet owners and add them to your workspace

Assigning at least one, ideally several (depending on the area of expertise) responsible subscriber(s) to each of the applications is a critical step during your SAP LeanIX onboarding. This lays the foundation of a strong and reliable data governance process on the long run.

To find out how many key stakeholders should be involved and which are the right ones, this cheat sheet will help you to create your model of application ownership.

• WHAT

  Having an application ownership model means assigning the right people to the right responsibilities, following a specific procedure to ensure the contribution of accurate and relevant data. Since SAP LeanIX is a collaborative tool, establishing a clear application ownership model is critical for its long-term success.

  In order to achieve such, in the following we will provide you with our best practise approach:

  What you should do	Description
  Understand what an application ownership model is	In LeanIX, application ownership refers to the framework for assigning clear accountability and responsibilities for managing and maintaining the data of individual application fact sheets within an organization's IT landscape, thereby forming the foundation for transparency, efficiency, and reliable, up-to-date data in your workspace.
  Understand the concept of application ownership	The concept of an application ownership model involves defining a model that includes different personas, their responsibilities, tasks and the knowledge required for specific applications.We recommend defining a concept with two main personas. This enables quick wins during onboarding, makes it easier to identify which stakeholders in your organization should be assigned to each role (based on the personas), and reduces complexity when assigning individuals to applications. Hint Exceptions may occur, especially with custom-built or SaaS applications, where only one person might be responsible. However, every application in the workspace must have at least one assigned subscriber.
  What is the role and related tasks of an application owner?	Application owners are responsible for providing initial onboarding data for the application's fact sheet and maintaining it regularly to keep information up to date. This is done through a defined process using quality seals (explained during onboarding). Application owners are notified to address broken quality seals, triggered either by changes made by others or a preconfigured timeframe (e.g., every six months). To perform this task effectively, accurate information about specific attributes is required. In large organizations, this knowledge is rarely held by one person, so responsibilities should be distributed across personas, even within a single application, as outlined in the next section.
  Understand the two different personas	Application business ownere.g. Product Owner (if exists)	Application technology owner (IT owner)e.g. Team Lead for the Application (if exists)
  	This role should be served by someone who is functionally responsible within the business domain and has a vested interest in the business performance and success	This role should be served by someone who is functionally responsible within the technology domain and has a vested interest in IT's performance and success
  	Individuals who rely on the application to perform their daily tasks have a good understanding of the application's business functionality and its impact on their department's operations owns budget for enhancements/support for the application (if exists) whose goals are most aligned with what the application does from a domain/process perspective can evaluate the functional fit of the application	Individuals who are responsible for the technical maintenance and support of the application have a deep understanding of the application's technical aspects, including its infrastructure, integrations, and potential IT risks who works on the team that builds/supports/maintains this application ideally not delegated to someone in an administrative, architecture, or PMO capacity can evaluate the technical fit of the application

• WHY

  SAP LeanIX is a collaborative tool that requires input from multiple stakeholders to function properly. Think of all the different sections and attributes stored on every single application fact sheet, and now multiply that by the total number of applications used in your organization. The truth is, no single person can know every piece of information needed, maintain all fact sheets, and ensure they are accurate. That is simply not possible.

  To tell the truth: an accurate application ownership model is essential for your success with SAP LeanIX.

  What is in for you when defining application owners right from the start With specific individuals responsible for the applications they manage:
  1. you can trust in having reliable data in the system	2. you will always find the right point of contact for any queries or information needs	3. you can make use of the quality seal mechanism to ensure the right person is notified when maintenance work is required

START: Find the responsible persons and set up the application ownership model in your workspace

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Before we start

If your organization already has an application ownership model in place consider ITSM integrations (e.g., ServiceNow) and evaluate what needs to be adjusted in your current model to make it compatible with SAP LeanIX. Refer to the 'What' section to understand the recommended LeanIX model.

Hint

Please see our integration courses:

• SAP Signavio integration
• ServiceNow integration

STEP 1: Start simple

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Define your first scope, a certain trusted group you want to start with (e.g. one department) and later repeat with further groups or organizational units. Think about which group would you consider the closest? Where do you have good connections?

Hint

Reach out and "shake hands" with your colleagues. These are your potential friends, where you could mutually support each other's efforts.

The following partners are very likely to come into consideration. They all have common interests and would benefit from working together:
Procurement:	Leveraging SAP LeanIX as authoritative record/central source of truth for Applications. Understand if new Application needs to be purchased for that functional category/Business Capability, or if they already exist.
Security:	Internal audits, compliance (SOX), internal IT/business policies such as access security policies (is information secured behind SSO?)
ITSM:	Integration with CMDB (ex: ServiceNow). Splitting responsibilities; EA's cover Business Capabilities and ITSM covering IT Components. Applications owned where? Don't duplicate work.

STEP 2: Get the right stakeholders involved to identify application owners

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1. Find the application leaders

Start with your organization's org chart to get an overview of the teams and roles within your trusted group. If the owner is unclear, begin with the functional head of the organization. The goal is to identify middle management, leadership, or domain leads who know which team members are responsible for specific applications. In this course, we refer to this group as application leaders.. These application leaders can assist in identifying the responsible individuals.

2. Enable application leaders

Help the application leaders understand how to classify the two different personas (application business owner and application technical (IT) owner). To support them in identifying the right people, you can provide them with the cheatsheet located at the bottom of this step.

Summary

Subscription role	Application leaders	Application owners (Business owner and IT owner)
Subscription type	Observer (= changes on the fact sheet will cause the quality seal to beak)	Responsible (= in case of changes on a fact sheet the quality seal does not break)
Characteristics	Knows who is responsible for which application in their team	Trusted person who owns the data of a fact sheet and knows details about the application
Task in SAP LeanIX	Identify the responsible person per application	Provide attribute data, maintain data and approve quality seal in case of changes from observers

Cheatsheet questions:
To identify the business owner	To identify the technical (IT) owner
Can this person decide on budget questions? Can this person provide information on: Description Business criticality Lifecycle Functional fit Is this person's dependent on this application?	Can this person name the provider this application is running on? Can this person provide information on: Interface Technical fit IT component Can this person name the IT implications a change of this application would bring?
Hint In case you have only one persona defined, e.g. the business owner, ask them about who could be the second person (IT owner). Once one person is defined they can help to discover others.

Arguments to "sell" the importance of defining and assigning specific application owners to gain buy-in from management and leadership:

• Be informed early on

  (e.g., regarding changes in applications your business relies on to function)

• Increase efficiency

  (e.g., your team knows exactly to whom to reach out and what steps to be done)

• Reduce compliance risks

STEP 3: Decide on how to get the data into LeanIX

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Decide how to get data of the responsible persons in LeanIX:
Leverage surveys (3A) (✅recommended)	Manual approach (3B)
Leverage SAP LeanIX surveys to get the names of responsible application owners from middle management (application leaders).	Manually ask the department heads (application leaders) to get information of responsible application owners and import your findings into the SAP LeanIX workspace.
Hint It is beneficial to inform stakeholders in advance about the coming survey. Find our recommendations for engaging stakeholders in SAP LeanIX Onboarding: Course 3 - Get Your Stakeholders On Board, Enrich Data and Take First Decision→ Unit 2: Fact Sheet Owners Onboarding
Explained below in the STEP 3A	Explained below in the STEP 3B

STEP 3A: Option 1 - Leverage surveys

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Leverage surveys:

(✅ Recommended)

1. Add a new subscription role: From the settings, navigate to Administration → Subscription Roles → New Subscription Role. Name:"Leaders application owners" Subscription Type:"Observer" (in case of changes on a fact sheet the quality seal breaks) Fact Sheet type:"Application" Add two more subscription role: Name:"Application business owner" and "Application technical (IT) owner" Subscription Type:"Responsible" (in case of changes on a fact sheet the quality seal does not break) Fact Sheet type:"Application"

2. Enable survey access for stakeholders Navigate to your profile and select invite users Type the email addresses of the application leaders you want to involve Unmark the send invitation Email checkbox (only available for SSO enabled workspaces!) Hint This way they will receive the survey via email and can insert their answers, but don't receive an invitation or other notifications. Later during onboarding you will get an introduction on how to actually invite additional stakeholders to your workspace.

3. Create the Survey: Hint To be able to use this method, your in-scope applications must already be populated in the workspace. Collaboration → Manage surveys → +New survey → open fact sheet filters Filter down to your selected scope of applications (e.g. per business capability) and use the filter on subscriptions n/a → click use fact sheet filter Fact sheet element → Subscriptions → type your question (e.g. Please fill in the responsible business owner of the application) → select "Responsible" → check the box for "allow creating a new subscription user" → next → see the preview → next Select "Application business owner" and "application technical (IT) owner" for subscription roles Customize the email template of your survey message in order to emphasize the importance of responding to the questions. Click go live Hint Remember: it is helpful to inform stakeholders in advance about the coming LeanIX survey. Find our recommendations for engaging stakeholders in SAP LeanIX Onboarding: Course 3 - Get Your Stakeholders On Board, Enrich Data and Take First Decision.

Find more information here:

Leveraging surveys to collect fact sheet contributors

Subscription roles

How to create a survey(opens in a new tab)

STEP 3B: Option 2 - Manual approach

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Asking manually Ask the department heads / application leaders about: A list of Applications their teams utilize Who are application owner / subject matter expert associated to respective Applications (role titles can be e.g. application owner, product owner, etc., for a respective application.) Approval on your final findings

Import your findings To import your findings, create an import template out of the SAP LeanIX inventory: Inventory → Filter down to applications only → select table view → add Subscriptions: Business owner and Technical (IT) Owner → export

Find more information about export and import of data click here.

STEP 4: Final data check

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To check whether application owners are missing and to gain a holistic overview of current state, use the table view in your inventory again, just like you did to create the import template in STEP 3B - Import your findings.

WELL DONE! You have just implemented the application ownership model.

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I confirm I have completed the step below:

1. I have defined an application ownership model