SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning

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Note

LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning was previously known as Business Transformation Module (BTM).

Overview

The LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning complements LeanIX Application Portfolio Management, providing advanced features to assist you in planning and executing transformations within your enterprise architecture. LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning is particularly useful for application modernization and ERP transformation use cases, allowing you to plan your target architecture and monitor initiative progress efficiently.

In this article, we will explore the key features of the Architecture and Road Map Planning, and its capabilities and demonstrate how to integrate them into your existing LeanIX Enterprise Architecture workflows seamlessly. For detailed step-by-step instructions on each feature, refer to the user guides available on the corresponding sub-pages.

Key Capabilities of The Architecture and Road Map Planning

The LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning enriches the LeanIX Enterprise Architecture suite with the following key capabilities and features:

• Pre-defined Transformation templates: Transformation templates allow you to model changes in your application portfolio in a standardized way to improve the efficiency of IT transformation planning.

  

• Roadmap with Milestones: The Project Roadmaps are enriched with Milestones, to visualize and understand major milestones of your initiatives, keep track of your modernization plans, and ensure IT transformation is on time, scope, and budget. Milestones are used to indicate when certain things are happening and provide structure to your project timeline. Milestones can be linked to lifecycle and thereby model dependencies between different projects and child projects.

  

• Reports enriched with Impacts: Impacts allow you to see the effects of future changes on a detailed level and understand dependencies between people, data, and infrastructure.

  

• Timeline Projections: Reports with timelines are enriched with Project/Initiative projections. It helps you compare and understand.

  

• Transformations Explorer: The Transformations Explorer gives a comprehensive overview of all Transformations of the workspace. It allows you to search by name, apply sorting and filtering, make edits, delete, and execute Transformations - all in one centralized location.

  

Introduction to Architecture and Road Map Planning

While the Application Portfolio Management enables you to document and build your current ('as-is') architecture, the Architecture and Road Map Planning seamlessly complements this by allowing you to model future ('to-be') state architectures. With the Architecture and Road Map Planning, you have the capability to model various transformations and changes in the Initiative Fact Sheet, visualize potential future states, compare various scenarios, analyze how these potential changes affect your architecture, and execute the most suitable option to arrive at your to-be state architecture.

As opposed to duplicating entire as-is architectures and creating sandbox versions of application landscapes, LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning resourcefully only stores what is being changed to the main architecture to ensure instantaneous modeling for your organization.

In the Architecture and Road Map Planning product, Objective and Initiative Fact Sheets have greater significance compared to their role in the Application Portfolio Management product. Objective Fact Sheets allow for the high-level definition and progress tracking of transformation initiatives and can be linked to Business Capabilities. While, the Initiative Fact Sheets are used to model detailed actions for achieving an Objective. The Architecture and Road Map Planning simplifies translating strategic goals into actionable IT initiatives by breaking down Objectives into Initiatives and Transformations.

Within Initiative Fact Sheets, the Transformations feature allows you to specify how a project will affect your architecture. Architecture and Road Map Planning comes with predefined Transformations, for example, Rollout Application, Upgrade Technology, Decommission Interface, etc., while you can also define custom Transformations. Architecture and Road Map Planning will automatically create relations to the Fact Sheets affected by those Transformations (e.g., from the Project to an affected Application). At the same time, it classifies and adds the type of Impact to the respective relations and fields.

The modeling of different scenarios involves the creation of new Project/Initiative Fact Sheets, each with different Transformations defined. By leveraging Reports, impacts can be compared and analyzed to choose the most effective roadmap for implementing the transformation. After buy-in from stakeholders, you can monitor the implementation with Roadmap Reports and simply execute the implemented Transformations to reflect the changes in your workspace.

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Adding LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning to your LeanIX workspace.

The LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning is a separate product which you could include in your LeanIX Enterprise Architecture workspace. If it is not already included in your contract, you can reach out to the Customer Success Manager, who would guide you on adding it to the contract and activating it for you through your Account Executive.

Transformation Insights from Architecture and Road Map Planning

Gain Transparency of The Initiatives Portfolio

LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning simplifies data collection and storage for teams supporting Initiatives. Each strategic goal in an Objective Fact Sheet has configurable fields to document its lifecycle, dependencies (organized through parent-child hierarchies), and contributions – such as improvements (e.g., Business Capability) and support (e.g., Projects).

Use the Project Landscape report to

• Achieve a holistic view from a strategic to a granular project level.
• Prioritize Initiatives based on multiple factors.
• Narrow down to a specific Objective to identify the supporting Initiatives.

Plan Project Roadmaps

The Architecture and Road Map Planning simplifies the translation of strategic goals into actionable IT Initiatives. You can achieve this by breaking down Objectives into Projects and Transformations. These components are used to articulate and define future scenarios, contributing to the creation of organization-wide IT roadmaps.

Modeling Transformations allows you to preview and contextualize the outcomes of IT Initiatives without implementing changes in the active (as-is) version of your architecture. Impacts range from transferring or creating relations, adding or removing custom tags, setting Technical and Functional fit ratings, setting Business Criticality scores, etc. Essentially, this introduces a comprehensive way to assess and understand the potential effects of your Initiatives before committing to implementation.

Visualize Target Architecture

Make use of powerful reporting features of Architecture and Road Map Planning to visualize target architecture. Architecture and Road Map Planning adds projection of Initiatives/Projects to reports with timelines. Landscape, Matrix, and Portfolio reports are embedded with an interactive timeline that can be adjusted to show the to-be states of IT landscapes. You have a wealth of reports at your disposal for analysis.

For instance:

• The Application Landscape Report allows you to identify the applications impacted by the ongoing transformation.
• Matrix Reports enables you to pinpoint impacts within specific regions and business units, offering a targeted insight into the effects of the transformation in distinct organizational contexts.

Compare Multiple Scenarios

You can model different scenarios with the creation of new Projects, each with different Transformations defined. By leveraging Reports, impacts can be compared and analyzed to choose the most effective roadmap for implementing the transformation.

Monitor Progress and Execute Transformations

LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning simplifies the monitoring and execution of transformations.

• The Transformations Explorer feature provides a centralized overview of all Transformations, ensuring a comprehensive understanding.
• Milestones in Initiative Fact Sheets aid in tracking important dates and landmarks in an effective way
• Project Status fields allow easy status updates, which can be represented in color-coded reports for easier consumption.
• Upon reaching milestones or implementing Transformations, a simple click of a button executes the modeled Transformations, seamlessly reflecting all the impacts in your workspace.