„Be sure you positively identify your target before you pull the trigger“
-TOM FLYNN
You are serving as the Chief Architect for a major bank, leading a group of domain architects as well as working with the corporate project management office, strategic planners, and operations management planners. Your company has been in business for over 60 years, growing through a series of acquisitions with other companies. The Governing Board has decided that a more structured approach to its infrastructure and services is necessary to safeguard the business, especially given the recent turmoil in the financial markets.

The CIO has sponsored the creation of an Enterprise Architecture group. This group has adopted TOGAF 9 as the basis for its enterprise architecture and developed higher level Target Architecture. However, the existing target architecture documentation does not provide a clear and specific guidance on how to achieve the long-term objectives and the update of the Target Architecture is now initiated on the business area level.
Target architecture description
The purpose now is to take the previous Target Architecture one step further and describe e.g. expectations on dependencies between Business architecture deliverables, and to connect it to the expectations on Products, IT Systems and Cost. We need to define a series of domain architectures, covering both business and IT on the business area level.
First, we describe the overall business context of the business area – the market, competition and regulatory environment. We list the strategic objectives of the Business area, showing the connection to the Business Area Strategy and Corporate Business Strategy. Next, we describe in overview level the customer segments, their needs and channels through which they are reached/services, needed to execute the above described Business Strategy.Then, we describe the Business Capabilities (i.e. abilities to perform certain business activities together with needed resources and business processes), needed to execute the above described Business Strategy and Business Models. For each Business Capability we describe desired (TO-BE) Situation and Rationale (connection to the Business Strategy and Business Model). Then, we connect Business capabilities to IT domains. For each IT domain we describe: AS-IS Situation, Desired (TO-BE) Situation, Change Strategy, Rationale (connection to the Business Capabilities) and a list of existing or future IT Systems implementing the given domain. We list the architecturally important decisions that affect Target Architecture of Business area and describe their implications. Finally, we connect created deliverables to cost, through an SLA mapping to the Systems. All combined must give enough insight to derive concise and accurate roadmap for business area.
Improved planning
Mature Target architecture description guides the strategic planning process towards the target situation for Business and IT, improves the yearly Business Planning. And again, architecture supports communication of target to Senior Management and results with better decision making.