- 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 SAP LeanIX model.
Hint
Please see our integration courses:
- 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 others effortsThe 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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- 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.
- 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
- Find the application leaders
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 Tasks 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 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 whom to reach out and what steps need to be done)
- Reduce compliance risks
- STEP 3: Decide on how to get the data into SAP LeanIX
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Decide how to get data of the responsible persons in SAP 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).
Hint
It is beneficial to inform stakeholders in advance about the coming survey
Manually ask the department heads (application leaders) to get information of responsible application owners and import your findings into the SAP LeanIX workspace.
Explained in step 3A Explained in step 3B
- STEP 3A: Option 1 - Leverage surveys
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Leverage surveys (recommended) - Add a new subscription role
From the settings, navigate toAdministration→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 2 more subscription roles:
- 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"
- Enable survey access for stakeholders
- Navigate to your profile and select invite users
- Type the email address 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.
- 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 surveys→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 questions (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 subscriptions 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 SAP LeanIX survey.
Find more information here:
- Add a new subscription role
- STEP 3B: Option 2 - Manual approach
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Asking Manually Ask the department heads/application leaders about:
- A list of Applications their team 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 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.
- WELL DONE!: You have just implemented the application ownership model
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