The current-state picture of a legacy IT estate, hand-offs and bottlenecks included.
1 it landscape example
Legacy IT landscape
The current state of a statistics office before its data platform: file hand-offs and two bottlenecks.
This is the before picture of a modernisation case. Arrows are labelled with the file that moves, CSV, email, Excel, and the two accented nodes are the shared drive with no version control and the manual publishing step.
An IT landscape diagram, or current-state IT map, shows the systems an organization runs today and how they exchange data, including manual file transfers, spreadsheets and point-to-point integrations. In enterprise architecture it is the as-is view.
Read it as an inventory with connections. Each box is an application or system, lines are interfaces, and markers highlight bottlenecks, duplicated data and fragile handoffs.
When to use an IT landscape diagram
Use it at the start of a modernization or data platform project to agree on where things stand.
Use it to build the case for change by making manual work and risk visible.
If you are describing the target design, draw a separate to-be architecture diagram rather than mixing both states.
How to make a good IT landscape diagram
Include the unofficial pieces, such as spreadsheets and shared folders, since that is where risk hides.
Label each interface with how data moves: API, nightly file, email, manual export.
Mark bottlenecks and pain points in a single highlight color.
Date the diagram and name its owner, because the as-is state changes.
