Our client, an international financial services provider, had started working on a revision of it's business and IT strategy. Contrary to previous strategy cycles, members of the executive board had called for an inclusion of target pictures on the development of the overall IT. Apparently, this was attributable to increased regulatory requirements that had been imposed by German financial services regulator BaFin.

The goal of our assignment was to develop a long-term target picture for the overall group IT (with an emphasis on the application landscape) as well as a corresponding roadmap. Target picture and roadmap drafts were to be used as an input for board level discussions and finally to be included as part of the revised IT strategy.

In a first step, an existing functional reference model of the application landscape was extended and updated. Based on this, different views were created to describe the as-is and the to-be architecture (short-, mid- and long-term). Special attention was paid to a compact, appealing and readily understandable rendering. The views were at first discussed with IT management and selected members of the executive board and refined gradually. The intermediate result was then discussed at a board retreat. After final adjustments, the views were included in the revised IT strategy document.

The result of our work was a condensed description of the overall IT target picture and roadmap tailored to the needs of an executive level audience and for publication within the revised strategy. Target picture and roadmap had been discussed with and approved by IT management and the executive board. Hence, the client organization had matched up with tightened regulatory demands and, for the first time, developed a commonly agreed and binding vision for the future development of IT.