Enterprise IT landscapes are getting more complex. Over time, most organizations accumulate hundreds of applications—some business-critical, some redundant, and some forgotten. Application Portfolio Management (APM) helps make sense of this growing tangle by providing a structured approach to assessing, managing, and optimizing your software assets.
But like any structured approach, success depends on measurement. As noted management theorist Peter Drucker probably never actually said, “what gets measured, gets managed.”
In this post, we’ll walk through 10 application portfolio management metrics worth paying attention to—metrics that help you assess cost, value, risk, and lifecycle maturity.
Whether you’re looking to rationalize your stack or just get a better handle on what you have, these metrics will give you a clearer view.
What Is Application Portfolio Management?
Application Portfolio Management is the practice of inventorying, evaluating, and managing all the software applications an organization uses. The goal is to ensure the portfolio is aligned with business goals, cost-effective, secure, and technically viable.
At scale, APM becomes a foundational capability for CIOs and enterprise architects. It allows them to:
- Identify redundant or underused applications
- Rationalize spend
- Ensure apps are technically aligned and secure
- Plan for modernization or retirement
For a deeper dive into how APM works in practice, check out Enov8’s Live APM platform.
What Do We Mean by “Metrics”?
In APM, metrics are how we track the health and value of each application in the portfolio. These aren’t just financial figures (though those matter). They include indicators of technical quality, business fit, usage patterns, lifecycle state, and operational risk.
Some metrics are straightforward, like cost or usage. Others are more subjective—like a business value score—but still critical for decision-making. Together, these measurements offer a comprehensive view of your software landscape.
Let’s look at 10 of the most useful APM metrics to track.
Application Portfolio Management Metrics to Track
1. Total Number of Applications
This is the baseline metric—how many applications does your organization currently have? It might sound simple, but many organizations don’t have an accurate count. Knowing this number is essential for scoping your portfolio, identifying growth trends, and understanding complexity.
A sharp increase in this metric year over year might signal an accumulation problem or ungoverned sprawl. It also provides a starting point for tracking rationalization progress.
2. Application Usage Rate
Which applications are being used regularly—and which are just sitting there? Usage rate helps you separate the essential from the expendable.
This metric typically combines user activity data with system access logs to determine active engagement. Apps with very low usage might be candidates for consolidation or retirement, especially if they still incur maintenance costs.
3. Business Value Score
Not all applications are created equal. Some drive critical business capabilities; others play a minor supporting role. The business value score is a qualitative metric that evaluates how important an application is to the organization’s operations or strategy.
Scoring might be based on stakeholder input, alignment with core processes, or dependency mapping. This metric helps prioritize investments—and avoid deprecating something that, while niche, is mission-critical.
4. Technical Fit Score
An application might be functionally useful but still problematic if it doesn’t align with your technical strategy. This metric evaluates how well an app fits with your target architecture, security standards, infrastructure model, or preferred tech stack.
Technical fit is essential for modernization planning. Apps that score poorly may become more expensive and risky to maintain over time, even if they’re still widely used.
5. Cost to Maintain
This is one of the more concrete metrics in APM: how much does it cost to keep each application running? This includes licensing, hosting, support contracts, infrastructure, and internal support time.
Understanding maintenance costs helps you identify low-value, high-cost candidates for deprecation or replacement. It’s also useful for budgeting and making the case for reinvestment or migration.
6. Redundancy Index
Do you have multiple applications doing the same job? The redundancy index measures how many functionally similar apps exist within a particular domain (e.g., five different CRM systems across business units).
High redundancy usually points to inefficiencies, integration challenges, and unnecessary costs. This metric is often the first clue that rationalization is needed.
7. Risk Exposure
Some applications carry more risk than others—especially those running on outdated infrastructure, relying on unsupported software, or lacking compliance coverage.
Risk exposure can be measured by combining data on:
- Security vulnerabilities
- Regulatory alignment
- End-of-life dependencies
- Lack of vendor support
High-risk apps should be flagged for remediation, especially if they also rank high in business value.
8. Time Since Last Update
Applications that haven’t been updated in a long time may be stagnant—or worse, abandoned. This metric tracks the time elapsed since the last code commit, feature release, or maintenance patch.
Apps with long update gaps may be falling behind on security patches, feature expectations, or compatibility. This is especially relevant for applications that are supposed to be under active development.
9. Mean Time to Deploy (MTTD)
This metric is commonly used in software delivery pipelines to measure how long it takes to move a change from development into production. In an APM context, it offers insight into SDLC agility and release health.
Long deployment cycles may indicate heavy manual processes, bottlenecks, or lack of automation. For apps with frequent changes, tracking MTTD helps assess operational efficiency.
10. Retirement Pipeline
How many applications are currently scheduled for retirement or sunset in the next quarter or year? Keeping track of this helps with planning transitions, ensuring continuity, and understanding the natural lifecycle of your application ecosystem.
This metric is especially helpful in demonstrating progress during portfolio rationalization efforts.
Tying It All Together with Enov8
Tracking APM metrics manually—or across disconnected spreadsheets—can quickly become overwhelming. That’s where platforms like Enov8’s Live APM come into play.
Enov8 provides a centralized environment for modeling your applications, visualizing their interdependencies, and attaching the kinds of metrics we’ve discussed in this post. Whether you’re assessing technical risk, tracking usage, or preparing for application retirement, Enov8 helps make the data visible and actionable.
For more on APM strategies and tooling, check out:
- The Top Application Portfolio Management Tools
- An Introductory Guide to Application Portfolio Management
Conclusion
Application Portfolio Management is more than just taking inventory—it’s about understanding what you have, what it’s worth, and where the risks and opportunities lie. The metrics you track will determine the insights you get, and ultimately, the decisions you make.
By focusing on these 10 metrics—spanning inventory, usage, value, technical alignment, risk, and lifecycle—you can turn your application data into a foundation for smarter planning and more efficient IT operations.
