  As businesses get more sizable and more mature they now, inevitably accrete
more and more software systems. This estate expansion leads not only to greater
complexity and expense for the enterprise, but also to fragmentation,
inconsistency and siloing of business processes. Because platform
rationalisation and system decommissioning never happens spontaneously, a
perennial problem for the enterprise then becomes how to simplify their
corporate software platforms. Recently, Curlew Research personnel were involved
in a software rationalisation program within a large global life sciences
company and this paper describes an approach to decommissioning which we
developed as part of that project, and which we feel could be of use more
widely to help with objective more user-centric system rationalisation. The
method derives from a model developed by Noriaki Kano et al to help with
determining customer satisfaction and loyalty, and the prioritisation of new,
additional functionality, features or "products", for example when looking to
enhance software applications. Using a blueprint process for rationalisation,
the Curlew-Kano method enables each application to be placed efficiently and
objectively into one of four categories - Retain; Review; Remove; Research -
thus allowing the enterprise to identify and prioritise quickly those systems
which warrant further investigation as part of a decommissioning activity. The
key difference of the Curlew-Kano method compared to other application
rationalisation methodologies is the fundamental involvement of users in the
identification of systems more suitable for rationalisation and possible
decommissioning. In our view involving users more fully in system
rationalisation leads to better outcomes for the enterprise.
