CIOs will be stuck with burdensome, expensive application portfolios until they take the steps necessary to rationalize and streamline the portfolios. But streamlining the portfolio with poor transparency and no usable metrics virtually guarantees that ill-informed decisions will continue to exacerbate, not solve, the problem. CIOs should encourage their portfolio management team's efforts to identify, cultivate, and institutionalize the collection of application information to move their efforts from business as usual (failure) to breakthrough performance.