What doesn’t make sense? Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon all prune their massive technology portfolios more than you do.
I’ve been studying this issue for a while and have recorded my latest thinking about why you should be pruning your portfolio in detail on EarlyAdopter.com in this article: “Numerify: Using Systems of Intelligence for IT Pruning” The article also explains how to use a system of intelligence, essentially advanced BI applied to IT, to provide detailed information about all aspects of IT to help with pruning.
While that article explains the details, in this space I’d like to take a closer look at the benefits of pruning.
The two main benefits are:
1. Increasing the pace and amount of resources truly freed up to support innovation.
2. Reducing staffing costs related to keeping the lights on.
The first benefit related to innovation comes from the fact that a well-executed pruning program not only retires systems that are providing low value, but also makes operations more efficient in general. Pruning leads to understanding. Understanding leads to optimization, which if meaningful, should mean that your systems become easier to run and change.
More of the Forbes article from Dan Woods
