Modernisation order
- Most exposed: Mainframe batch scheduler (stops 3 items).
- For this failure: none stops none.
Executive Intelligence · Technology and Innovation
Technology Debt and Modernization Radar
A register of systems with age, support status, risk and owner, and a modernization plan.
Demonstration: Fairholme Holdings (fictional) · Diversified holding company. Fictional data and a scripted answer.
The situation
- Organisation
- Fairholme Holdings (fictional)
- Who is asking
- Chief technology officer
- Industry
- Diversified holding company
- What happened
- An old payroll system is nearing the end of vendor support, and the CTO must show what depends on it before the board funds a replacement.
The question asked
What depends on our oldest systems, and what would a failure cost the business?
What it reads, and who can see the result
- Application inventory with dependencies registerSystems, age, support status and who relies on them.
- Reads
- The inventory and its dependencies.
- Does not read
- The data the systems hold.
- Permission
- Architecture office access.
- Who sees it
- The CTO and the CFO.
Try it
Fail one or more items and see what stops and what only degrades, worked out by following the dependencies.
Choose what fails or loses support. Hard dependencies stop with it; soft ones carry on, degraded.
- Support ends in 7 months.
- Two engineers know it.
- Supported.
- Needs the payroll system.Depends on: Legacy payroll system (hard)
- Needs the scheduler and the ERP.Depends on: Mainframe batch scheduler (hard), Current ERP (hard)
- Needs wages and ledger.Depends on: Monthly wages (hard), General ledger postings (soft)
- Needs ledger postings.Depends on: General ledger postings (hard)
- Needs the close.Depends on: Month-end close (hard)
- fails or loses support
- 0
- Stops as a result
- 0
- Degraded
- 0
- Unaffected
- 8
The answer
Simulated answer. Written for this fictional case, not produced by a live model. Only the figures in it are computed, from what you decided above.
If none fails: 0 item(s) stop and 0 degrade.
Following the dependencies, a failure of none stops none and degrades none [S1][S2]. The system whose failure stops the most is Mainframe batch scheduler, which stops 3 other item(s).
The scheduler is the quiet risk: it supports the whole close and depends on two people. A modernisation plan that starts with the system the vendor is dropping may miss the one the business is most exposed through.
Relies on: S1 · Application inventoryS2 · Vendor support notices
Review and approval
The chief technology officer decides. Approving sets the order of the modernisation roadmap. It does not fund or begin any replacement.
Not ready to approve. Fail at least one item first, to see what depends on it.
In the product this is a different person with the right permission. Here you play that role to see the rule.
What it produces
Limits of this example
- Only recorded dependencies are shown.
- Shows consequence, not the cost of replacement.
- This is a scripted demonstration on fictional data. No model was called and no real organisation, person or result is shown.
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