LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Overview

Introductory guide to begin your LeanIX journey

The Getting Started section is a comprehensive guide designed to assist all new LeanIX users in effectively using the LeanIX Enterprise Architecture application. This document covers essential topics to provide you with a good understanding of the fundamentals of LeanIX and its significance in enterprise architecture management.

Getting Started guide will help you explore and become familiar with the LeanIX's user interface, functionalities, and key features. You get to understand your role and contribution to your organization's enterprise architecture. Enterprise Architects will receive a high-level introduction to administrative features, as well as guidance on getting data into LeanIX Enterprise Architecture to ensure a quick and smooth start.

Introduction to LeanIX Enterprise Architecture

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture is a SaaS application that allows you to manage and optimize enterprise architecture. Enterprise Architecture Management involves aligning an organization's IT infrastructure and systems with its business strategy and objectives. It includes understanding and documenting the organization's IT landscape, planning and designing IT architecture to support the ever-evolving business strategy, and overseeing the implementation of such architectural changes. LeanIX Enterprise Architecture helps carry out these processes effectively.

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture provides a simplified, 360° overview of all your applications, business capabilities, and IT components, so you can gain control of your expanding IT landscape and create roadmaps for major transformation initiatives. Through collaborative and democratized data collection, out-of-the-box integrations, and fast insights through reports and diagrams, LeanIX Enterprise Architecture empowers you to make better, faster decisions and align your IT strategy with business goals.

With LeanIX, you can:

  • Align all IT strategies with business goals
  • Map all applications to the business capabilities they support and all underlying dependencies
  • Design the ideal architecture you aim to create
  • Make better, faster business decisions
  • Enhance operational efficiency
  • Identify cost-saving opportunities and optimize IT investments
  • Improve integration and interoperability among different systems and applications
  • Mitigate security and compliance risks from technical debt and obsolescence

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Products

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture Management comprises three products supporting different enterprise architecture domains and use cases.

  • Application Portfolio Management: Application Portfolio Management, comes with capabilities and integrations to build an application repository. Primarily, it drives the use cases of Application Portfolio Assessment and Rationalization.
  • Architecture and Road Map Planning: Architecture and Road Map Planning is focused on planning and executing transformation initiatives within your enterprise architecture. Architecture and Road Map Planning complements Application Portfolio Management and comes with advanced features to plan target architecture and track the progress of transformation initiatives. It drives the use cases of Application Modernization and ERP Transformation.
  • Technology Risk and Compliance: Technology Risk and Compliance is focused on managing technology obsolescence risk. It comes with features to automate IT component discovery and application lifecycle management. It helps to effectively manage technology risks, maintain operational stability, and ensure compliance with relevant regulations and standards. It drives the use case of Obsolescence risk management.

Key Concepts and Features

In this section, you will receive a high-level understanding of how LeanIX application works. You will know what Fact Sheets and Meta models are, how information about all architectural elements is captured and organized, the role of collaborative features in ensuring data quality and completeness, and how Reports and Diagrams contribute to visualizing and analyzing the data.

Fact Sheets and Meta Model

LeanIX Enterprise Architecture allows you to document the organization's IT landscape and architectural elements using so-called Fact Sheets. Each architectural object, such as applications, business capabilities, IT components, etc., has its own Fact Sheet to store relevant information.

There are 12 predefined Fact Sheet types, each serving as a template with specific attributes and fields. For instance, to capture information about an application, you would use the Application Fact Sheet type. It includes attributes such as Lifecycle, Technical Fit, Functional Fit, etc. Subsequently, individual Fact Sheets are created for each application you wish to document.

Fact Sheets form the foundation of the Meta Model. The LeanIX Meta Model is like a blueprint that defines the relationships between different architectural elements and how the information in Fact Sheets is interconnected. For example, Business Capabilities rely on Applications, which, in turn, use Data Objects and IT Components, while Organizations use Applications and so forth.

The Meta Model can also be customized so that organizations can adjust the structure and relationships of architectural elements to meet their unique requirements. However, customizing the Meta Model should be done thoughtfully, considering that the out-of-the-box Meta Model is already well-suited for its intended purpose. To learn more about the Meta Model and modeling Fact Sheets, see Meta Model.

The high-level representation of the out-of-the-box Meta Model below shows the associated relationships:

LeanIX Meta Model

LeanIX Meta Model

Inventory

The Inventory is the centralized repository that stores and organizes information about all architectural elements in the form of Fact Sheets. Inventory is where you create, add, and manage Fact Sheets and data. Hence, it is also the hub for accessing all Fact Sheets and associated information you may need.

Documenting an organization's IT landscape is a collaborative effort. Contribution from Application Owners, Business Owners, Data Architects, etc, ensures comprehensive information on Fact Sheet attributes, dependencies, and relationships. Collaboration features such as Surveys, Comments, and To-Dos play an important role in maintaining accurate and up-to-date data. Additionally, the Fact Sheet Completeness and Quality Seal features help EAs in tracking the quality and completeness of data. The accuracy of the analysis is directly dependent on the sufficiency of data quality

Reports and Diagrams

When sufficient information about various architectural elements has been captured, Enterprise Architects make use of Reports and Diagrams to analyze and visualize the as-is and future-state architecture of their organization.

Users make use of Reports to obtain a clear overview of current data, identify trends, redundancies, and risks, as well as monitor the health of the architecture in a simple and understandable way. For instance, Landscape Reports can be used to get a comprehensive view of the IT landscape, Matrix Reports provide correlations between attributes of different Fact Sheet types, and Roadmap Reports can be used to outline strategic initiatives and priorities for future state architecture.

Application Landscape Report

Application Landscape Report

Similarly, Diagrams enable users to build visual models of an organization's enterprise architecture. You can break down complex architecture into manageable parts and interactively visualize relationships, data flow, and dependencies between various architectural elements. These visualization and analytical capabilities enable EAs to chart out needed action plans, such as Application rationalization, modernization, cloud migration, ERP transformation, etc.

Who Uses LeanIX Enterprise Architecture

A variety of individuals in different roles use LeanIX:

  • Enterprise Architects: Document, model, analyze, and optimize the enterprise architecture of the entire organization. To get started as a workspace administrator, see LeanIX for EAs.
  • CIOs and IT leadership: Gain a holistic view of IT performance, identify areas for optimization, and ensure alignment of IT with overall business strategy.
  • Application and Business Owners: Understand how IT supports their business capabilities, ensure application data is accurate and up to date, and make data-driven decisions for improvement. To understand how to use LeanIX, see LeanIX for Application and Business Owners.
  • IT Security: Manage compliance, data privacy, and risk across the organization's tech landscape.
  • Transformation and Project Managers: Gain transparency into all IT projects to create roadmaps, manage interdependencies, refine budgeting, and mitigate risk. To understand how to use LeanIX, see LeanIX for Application and Business Owners. For a better understanding related to your roles, consider exploring the Architecture and Road Map Planning guide and ERP Transformation use case.
  • Solution Architects: Design, implement, and integrate solutions to meet specific business and technology needs.