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Asset Register

The register

Everything here, in eight sections. If you are starting from nothing, read the foundations and then the discovery section. If you already have a register, the spend and access sections are where the findings usually are.

Every record

All 50 notes, grouped by section, each appearing once. Open a section for descriptions.

Foundations

6  ·  4,636 words

Three separate problems share one name, and they need different work. Plus the field that does more than all the others combined: who is accountable for each application still being needed.

Discovery

6  ·  4,517 words

No single source sees your estate. Four sources, each with a different blind spot, plus the reconciliation that is most of the actual work and the gaps that remain after it.

Licences and spend

8  ·  5,592 words

Where the money is: unused seats, over-tiered subscriptions, duplicate tools and renewals that arrive unnoticed at a higher price. Most of it is visible from data you already hold.

Hardware assets

7  ·  4,946 words

The older discipline, and the one organisations are frequently worse at because it lapsed rather than never existed. Including what breaks when you can no longer walk to the device.

Access and leavers

7  ·  4,943 words

Disabling the directory account closes federated applications and nothing else. Twelve things that survive it, plus the review process that produces removals rather than a certification rate.

Security and compliance

7  ·  4,961 words

Reviewing everything to the same depth guarantees nothing gets reviewed. Plus the layer nobody reviews at all: the access your applications have to each other.

Running the programme

8  ·  5,528 words

The order matters more than the tooling. Discovery first, ownership second, controls last — and the reverse order is why most programmes stall after the first phase.

Reference

1  ·  737 words

Terms defined once, plus the ones deliberately avoided here and why.