Selecting Enterprise Applications for Performance Audit Using Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP).

Performance and scalability issues in Enterprise applications are leading to multimillion dollar losses to Businesses across the globe. Such issues lead to bad customer experiences, lower employee productivity, reduced operational efficiency and ultimately impact the business. Regular performance audit of the IT systems across the entire technology stack is a proven method to identify and fix the pending and chronic performance issues, thereby improving performance. This complements other methods like performance monitoring and testing. A large enterprise can have thousands of applications and identifying the critical applications to undergo regular performance audit can be challenging, particularly in enterprises that have many teams. Selecting the right application set can be a subjective, unstructured and error prone process. Wrong selection can lead to sub-optimal coverage and no reduction in the risk profile of the applications that matter the most. How should enterprises address this challenge and objectively select an optimal set of applications for the audit activity? Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is discussed in this paper as a technique for introducing objectivity and dealing with the complex decision-making process while selecting the application set. The paper applies the technique to a typical banking enterprise and explains how the critical applications can be selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]