Enterprise Application Transformation Strategy and Roadmap Design: A Business Value Driven and IT Supportability Based Approach

This paper proposes a practical and framework based approach to design an architecture transformation strategy and roadmap aiming to transform or modernize critical legacy enterprise systems. The approach is business value driven with IT supportability in terms of lower application operational and support costs, higher business value and shorter time to market of application delivery. The approach introduces a robust enterprise application architecture assessment framework with an emphasis on both technical (internal) and strategic (external) perspectives to guide the application assessment and a finance self-support transformation strategy to aid its transformation roadmap design. The approach was applied in multiple large enterprises successfully and received endorsements and positive feedback from the sponsors. The paper also presents a case study detailing the successful application of the approach to modernize an enterprise logistics transportation management system.