REflecting on an Application Rationale Approach—Module 9

To be successful in meeting the needs of stakeholders, reduce redundancy in applications and costs, and achieve required outcomes for student achievement, it is important for leaders in education to use a criteria to determine priority and to assess the applications being deployed, determine readiness, or whether the application is to be retired. This involves an application strategy that provides consistency in analyzing applications across an organization, a strategy similar to what is being used to achieve business outcomes. Although such strategies are commonplace in the business environment, it appears somewhat delayed in education. Rather than using a criteria, a strategy or a rationalization educational leaders often discuss and evaluate applications without fully understanding the long-range planning risk or lack the needed information to make critical decisions. This results in applications that duplicate functions, additional maintenance costs, and maintaining older systems that should be retired. Scott Nelson (2010) in his piece on Application Overhaul, recommends an application overhaul for businesses applications to be included as part of the application strategy. A similar strategy should be used in education to improve educational programs, reduce costs, and meet achievement goals.

Applying this strategy with the educational application, Naviance assisted me to better understand the need for an Application Rationale Analysis and how this process provides a consistent strategy to make more informed decisions.

In moving forward with an Application Rationalization Process, I would recommend the following steps:

1. Inventory applications and determine which applications should be included.
2. Explain why an application rationale process is necessary and the ways it will benefit the school site or district.
3. Communicate with all stakeholders and gain "buy-in".
4. Provide a cost/benefit analysis of maintaining existing application, deploying new ones, and retiring old ones.
   

Reference:
Nelson, Scott D., (2010). Application Overhaul. Gartner, Inc. Retrieved on March 19, 2015 from http://www.gartner.com/it/initiatives/pdf/KeyInitiativeOverview_ApplicationOverhaul.pdf