/ use cases · technology estate
See the technology estateas a connected system.
Most organisations hold an inventory. An inventory tells you what you bought. It does not tell you what depends on what, where the same data lives twice, or what breaks when something is retired.
/ the problem
An inventory tells you what you bought.
It does not tell you what depends on what, where the same data lives twice, or what breaks when something is retired. Those are the questions every change programme starts by asking, and the ones the register was never built to answer.
/ five stages
Discover, understand, relate, analyse, change.
Discover — what do we actually have?
Systems in use, including those procured outside central IT. Interfaces exposed, versions running, ownership recorded.
Understand — what does each system contain?
Entities, fields, types, constraints and capabilities, resolved from the specification rather than from documentation.
Relate — how are systems connected?
Shared concepts, matching records, data flows and the interfaces that carry them, expressed through the canonical layer rather than pair by pair.
Analyse — where is there overlap, risk or unused value?
Duplicate capability across systems. Data held in more places than the register acknowledges. Capabilities paid for and never called.
Change — what happens if we alter something?
Impact modelled before the change is made. Which systems, which fields, which processes and which owners.
/ what you cannot currently see
Five answers the register does not hold.
- Which systems hold customer data, including those not on the register.
- Where two systems perform the same function for different teams.
- What depends on a specific API, and what fails if its version is withdrawn.
- Which migration must run first, because another depends on its output.
- Which owner needs to approve a change before it can proceed.
The estate question and the migration question are the same map. Migration discovery uses it. Stack intelligence is what the estate contains.
Start with the part of the estate nobody wants to touch.
The system everyone routes around is usually the one holding the relationships that matter.