The Pre-Read The briefing before the SAP meeting.

22 Sep 2026 · long · linkedin

live

Where does your SAP S/4HANA target architecture live?

A target architecture is the picture of the IT landscape a company intends to run after a transformation: which applications stay, which go, which move, and how they connect. Enterprise architecture is the discipline that maintains that picture and the current one next to it. Most SAP S/4HANA programs have a target architecture. Ask where it lives and the answer is a presentation deck from the steering committee, last edited before the first wave went live.

SAP LeanIX, SAP's enterprise architecture tool since the 2023 acquisition, now draws that picture on live inventory data and turns it into tracked changes. This piece covers what is available, why the planning step gets skipped, how the feature works, and what a program owner should ask for. It leaves out licensing detail and the SAP Signavio side of the transformation suite beyond one paragraph.

What is available

Target architecture planning is live in SAP LeanIX. SAP LeanIX announced it as generally available on 5 May 2026, and the SAP Help Portal carries dedicated documentation for target architecture diagrams and target architecture planning. It sits inside SAP LeanIX Architecture and Road Map Planning, a separately licensed module on top of the application portfolio inventory. Customers without that module do not see it.

Three things are specific.

First, a new diagram type. A target architecture diagram starts from the inventory, from SAP reference content, or from an imported drawing, and offers three views of the same canvas: current, changes, and target. In practice that means one diagram answers "what runs today", "what changes", and "what will run" without three separate files drifting apart.

Second, transformations. On the canvas an architect adds planned changes: decommission an application, roll out a new technology, rewire an interface. These changes stay on the canvas until the architect syncs them to a linked initiative in SAP LeanIX. Once synced, each one becomes a record in the transformations explorer and appears on the roadmap report with a milestone and a due date.

Third, architecture decisions. An architect can generate a decision record from the diagram, so the reasoning behind a change sits next to the drawing rather than in an email thread.

Planned, per the May announcement: editing project milestones directly in the roadmap report, synchronized decision links across the product, and by the end of 2026 a view of which parts of a target diagram change most often.

Background

LeanIX was a SAP Signavio partner for ten years before SAP agreed to buy it in September 2023 and closed the deal on 8 November 2023. SAP's stated reason was a transformation suite: SAP Signavio for business processes, SAP LeanIX for the IT landscape, alongside RISE with SAP and SAP BTP. LeanIX continues to serve non-SAP landscapes, and today the two products exchange data. Processes modeled in SAP Signavio can sync into SAP LeanIX as business context, and applications and capabilities can map back into the SAP Signavio dictionary.

The planning step itself is older than any of this. The LeanIX guide to target architecture describes a sequence most architects recognize. Set the baseline architecture, the as-is inventory of applications and the capabilities they support. Assess each application with the TIME model, a Gartner method that sorts applications into tolerate, invest, migrate, or eliminate. Then define the target and manage the migration in three phases: plan, decide, execute.

The reason SAP S/4HANA programs skip the step is practical. The baseline is usually incomplete, scattered across spreadsheets, interviews, and the memory of the person who built the interface in 2011. The system integrator arrives with a method and a timeline and starts on the ERP. The target architecture that does get drawn is done outside the repository, because the repository describes what is, and drawing what will be inside it means touching live data everyone else relies on. So the future state moves into a deck, and the deck stops being true around wave two.

The consequence shows up later as scope. Interfaces nobody listed. Satellite applications that assumed the old ERP's data model. A decommissioning list that was never agreed, so nothing gets switched off and the run cost after go-live is higher than the business case said.

How it works

Step 1, baseline. The inventory in SAP LeanIX holds fact sheets, one record per application, interface, IT component, or business capability. A target architecture diagram pulls those fact sheets onto a canvas. That is the current view.

Step 2, design. The architect draws the future state on the same canvas. Each edit that differs from the inventory is a transformation: a retirement, a new rollout, a changed relation. The changes view shows only those deltas; the target view shows the landscape as it will look once they are done. Nothing in the inventory moves. In practice that means an architect can draft two options for the same region, compare them side by side, and discard one without a cleanup job.

Step 3, commit. The architect links the diagram to an initiative, the SAP LeanIX object for a project or program, and syncs the transformations. From that point each change is a record with an owner and a date, visible in the transformations explorer and on the roadmap report alongside other planned initiatives. Conflicts between two programs retiring or depending on the same application become visible before either team commits budget.

Step 4, govern. As the program runs, the inventory changes and the diagram sits next to it. The planned end-of-year view of which parts of the target changed most often is aimed at this phase: a target that gets redrawn every month says something about the program.

Prerequisites are ordinary. The Architecture and Road Map Planning module, and permission to create and edit diagrams in the workspace. The inventory has to exist and be reasonably clean, which for many SAP customers is the real project.

Why it matters for SAP leaders

  1. If the objective is an SAP S/4HANA go-live on a fixed date, a target architecture can look like overhead. It is where the decommissioning list, the interface list, and the satellite application list come from. Without it, those lists get written during test.
  1. If the program runs under RISE with SAP or a GROW with SAP path, the target architecture is also where Clean Core decisions land: which custom developments move to SAP BTP, which become standard, which die. That list is easier to defend when it sits in the inventory rather than in a workshop photo.
  1. If the company already licenses SAP LeanIX for application portfolio management, the question is whether the Architecture and Road Map Planning module is in the contract. If it is, the tool is available now.
  1. If the company does not run SAP LeanIX, the feature does not change the buying decision on its own. The value depends on having an inventory worth drawing from. SAP LeanIX is also not the only enterprise architecture tool, and SAP's data model advantage is real but modest.
  1. The steering committee gets a different artifact. A target diagram with a changes view is a document a business owner can read: this application goes, that one arrives, this interface changes. It replaces the box-and-arrow deck as the thing people argue about.

Near term

Programmes in blueprint or explore phase can start using the diagram now if the module is licensed. Programmes already in realisation can still use it for the decommissioning and cutover picture, which is the part most often missing.

Longer term

SAP is building the transformation suite around this pairing. Expect SAP Signavio process models, SAP LeanIX target architectures, and SAP Cloud ALM project tracking to keep converging. Whether the roadmap report becomes the program's plan of record, or stays an architecture view next to the integrator's project plan, is an operating-model choice each company makes.

Open questions

The Help Portal documents the diagram; it does not say how large a landscape the canvas handles comfortably. The end-of-year change-frequency view is planned, not available. And the tool records decisions; it does not make them. Whether the program has an architect with the authority to sync a retirement into the roadmap, against the wishes of the application owner, is not something software fixes.

What to do this week

Ask the program lead one question: for the SAP S/4HANA target architecture, which applications are marked eliminate, and where is that list maintained? If the answer is a deck, and the company already licenses SAP LeanIX, ask whether the Architecture and Road Map Planning module is in the contract. If it is, the architect can draw the first target diagram against the live inventory before the next steering committee.

If short explanations like this are useful, follow along.

Sources

On LinkedIn

Sources