Solution Realization Diagram
Explain your target architecture with solution building blocks
This guide shows how you can create a Solution Realization Diagram to describe the target architecture of your solution with solution building blocks. Thereby, solution building blocks are either vendor-specific components, or functionality implemented by yourself. The Solution Realization Diagram evolves the Solution Concept Diagram by adding further technical details. With this, the Solution Realization Diagram is used for planning the implementation of the solution.
GOAL
Describe your target architecture by breaking your solution into functional components
PARTICIPANTS
Enterprise Architect, implementation expert
TIME NEEDED
Depends on complexity of the solution (30min to multiple days)
PHASE
Design
Before You Start
- Draw a High-Level Representation of Your Solution
- Make sure that you gain an understanding which capabilities the solution should have.
Materials you will need
Templates for Download
Steps
Identify Solution Building Blocks
Identify the solution building blocks which are in scope of your architecture. Start with the solution building blocks provided by SAP BTP. You can find these in the Service Catalog or the SAP Discovery Center. Then, map the identified solution building blocks to the previously in the Solution Concept defined architecture building blocks. You evolve your Solution Concept Diagram by replacing the architecture building blocks with the solution building blocks.
Example: you could map an SAP Analytics Cloud service – solution building block to your architecture building block “Dashboard for Analytics”.
If you need more guidance have a look at the completed example.
Completed Example
Check out the SAP Discovery Center missions to see if solution building blocks for your architecture building blocks are already available.
Use solution icons to make your results more tangible.
This diagram is mostly read by technical people like implementation teams and used as a guidance while implementing the solution. Therefore, it should be as detailed as possible.
Identify functional dependencies
Identify dependencies and the dataflow between the solution building blocks. The goal of this step is on the one hand to further refine the relationships from the solution concept and on the other hand to identify new functional dependencies. Add these insights to your diagram and arrange them in a way that provides clarity. You might need to shift some of your previous arrangements for this.
To enhance the structure of your diagram, incorporate different colors e.g., for the different types of building blocks. We recommend highlighting SAP BTP parts in a prominent color.
Add users & roles
In this step you focus on transferring the predefined users and roles from the solution concept to your diagram. Instead of mapping them only to the architecture building blocks think about their relationships to the solution building blocks. At the end of this step your diagram should include a clear overview about how which users and roles are interacting with your solution.
In the example this could be the end user which uses the SAP Analytics Cloud Dashboard to make an educated decision on which requests to approve.
This step can alternatively be combined with step 2.
Verify your Solution Realization Diagram
Informing your stakeholders (e.g. project managers or other architects) and verifying the Solution Realization Diagram is very important to ensure the assumptions made during the creation of your Solution Realization Diagram are correct.
If you created a stakeholder matrix and communication plan consult it to check how this verification should be done. (e.g. by email or as part of regular stakeholder meetings).
You are done!
Make sure to take the Solution Realization Diagram into account when discussing the technical implementation of your solution.
After developing the solution validate that your Solution Realization Diagram is still correct.
If you need to show complex infrastructures, have a look into the Software Distribution Diagram.
Follow the next methods in the Recommended Path to continue setting up your innovation project.