SAF Phase 2 — Current State Collection and Analysis

Overview

Current State Collection and Analysis covers the current-state Roles & Responsibilities, Capabilities & Requirements, Tools and Technologies (including Applications, Services, Software, Hardware, and Cloud), Data & Information (including Integrations), Organizations both internal and external, and Costs — and the analysis of all of it. This becomes the current-state representation portion of the SARB.

As established in “Why Solutions Architecture Produces a More Reliable Current State” earlier in this document, the defining characteristic of this phase is not merely that data is collected, but that it is vetted directly with the stakeholders who own the problem — with their blessing — rather than assumed or rolled up from aggregate sources. This is also the phase in which the SARB, drawing on the EA Platform as described in “How Solutions Architecture and the EA Platform Reinforce Each Other,” can accelerate collection by leveraging what is already known centrally, concentrating fresh effort on what is actually unknown or changed.

Best Practice: Do Not Proceed to Future State Until Current State Is Vetted and Blessed

Treat explicit stakeholder sign-off on the current-state findings as a gate before formally finalizing Future State Solutions Options in Phase 3 — informal ideas and possibilities for those options may naturally surface earlier and should be captured as they arise, consistent with the loosely sequential nature of the SAF established in “The Solutions Architecture Framework (SAF)” earlier in this document. This is the same discipline established in “Why Solutions Architecture Produces a More Reliable Current State” earlier in this document, applied concretely at this point in the engagement.

Benefit(s)

A vetted, blessed current state ensures the engagement’s own subsequent phases — future state options and decisions — are built on solid ground, not just on an assumption that later proves wrong. This is distinct from, though related to, the broader Enterprise-Architecture-level benefit described in “Why Solutions Architecture Produces a More Reliable Current State”: this benefit accrues to the engagement itself.