LeanIX for SAP Landscape Management and Custom Code Prioritisation

A critical decision in every S/4HANA migration is what to do with the custom ABAP estate. A mid-size ECC system might carry 1,500 to 4,000 custom programs, reports, interfaces, forms, and enhancements. Prioritising remediation without a structured view of business value, usage frequency, and technical dependency leads to either over-investment in irrelevant objects or under-investment in business-critical ones. LeanIX provides the portfolio management and dependency mapping layer that makes this decision defensible.

What LeanIX is — and is not

LeanIX is an enterprise architecture management platform. Its core data model is a set of Fact Sheets: Application, IT Component, Business Capability, Process, Interface, and Data Object. These Fact Sheets carry lifecycle metadata (active, phaseOut, endOfLife) and are connected to each other in a dependency graph.

LeanIX is not an ABAP analysis tool. It does not read ABAP code, parse CDS definitions, or understand SAP technical architecture natively. Its value is in the business and portfolio layer: which business capabilities depend on which applications, which interfaces connect which systems, and which applications are scheduled for retirement. The SAP-specific intelligence comes from integrations.

The SAP integrations that matter

SAP EAM Connector (Enterprise Architecture Management integration): SAP ships a connector that syncs SAP system landscape data — systems, clients, installed components, system roles — into LeanIX as IT Component Fact Sheets. This gives you an accurate, automatically maintained picture of your SAP landscape topology without manual data entry.

SAP S/4HANA Transformation Navigator: The Transformation Navigator is SAP’s tool for mapping your current ECC landscape to the S/4HANA target — it identifies which SAP standard capabilities map to which S/4HANA products and deployment options. LeanIX has a documented integration pattern with Transformation Navigator output, allowing you to import the recommended solution scope as a target state in your LeanIX portfolio.

Custom development sync: This is not a native connector; it is a custom integration built as part of the migration programme. The ABAP code scanning results — typically an extract from ATC, the SAP Custom Code Migration Fiori app (transaction STC01 with template), or tooling like s4ready.ai — are loaded into LeanIX as Application or IT Component Fact Sheets tagged to their parent business application. This is the step that makes LeanIX genuinely useful for custom code prioritisation.

Application lifecycle states and the prioritisation model

stateDiagram-v2
    [*] --> Active: Object in use\n(>1 execution last 12m)
    Active --> PhaseOut: Business decision:\nstandard process covers need
    Active --> Remediate: S/4HANA blocker\nidentified, business-critical
    Active --> Rebuild: Deprecated API\ncannot be remediated in-place
    PhaseOut --> Retire: Cutover\napproval
    Remediate --> Active: Remediation\ncomplete + tested
    Rebuild --> Active: New implementation\ndeployed
    PhaseOut --> Active: Reprieve:\nbusiness objection
    Retire --> [*]

    note right of Active: Lifecycle state\nmanaged in LeanIX\nFact Sheet

The lifecycle states in LeanIX — Active, Phase Out, End of Life — directly map to the decision categories for custom ABAP objects:

• Active → Remediate: Object is in active use, has S/4HANA incompatibilities (confirmed by ATC or code scan), and covers a business need with no standard replacement. Remediate the code.
• Active → Rebuild: Object is in active use but uses deprecated APIs that cannot be patched incrementally — the architecture needs to change (e.g., a direct BSEG read that needs to become an ACDOCA-based CDS query, requiring a significant rework of the data model).
• Active → Phase Out: Object is in active use but the underlying business need is covered by a standard S/4HANA process. The migration is the opportunity to retire the customisation and adopt the standard. This is the clean-core argument at the individual object level.
• End of Life: Object is not used (confirmed by SM20 logs or SAP Custom Code Migration usage statistics) or the consuming business process is being retired. Do not invest any remediation effort.

The data flow: LeanIX and SAP

graph LR
    subgraph "SAP Systems"
        SML["SAP System\nLandscape (SLD/LMDB)"]
        ATC["ATC S/4HANA\nReadiness Check"]
        CCM["Custom Code\nMigration App"]
        USAGE["SM20 / Usage\nStatistics"]
        TRANSNAV["S/4HANA\nTransformation Navigator"]
    end
    subgraph "LeanIX"
        FS_APP["Application\nFact Sheets"]
        FS_ITC["IT Component\nFact Sheets"]
        FS_BC["Business Capability\nFact Sheets"]
        FS_IF["Interface\nFact Sheets"]
        RPT["Portfolio Reports\n& Heat Maps"]
    end
    subgraph "Migration Decisions"
        PRI["Prioritised\nRemediation Backlog"]
        RET["Retirement\nDecisions"]
        ARCH["Target Architecture\nDesign"]
    end

    SML -->|EAM Connector| FS_ITC
    ATC -->|Custom sync / CSV| FS_APP
    CCM -->|Usage data| FS_APP
    USAGE -->|Usage enrichment| FS_APP
    TRANSNAV -->|Target scope import| FS_BC

    FS_APP --> RPT
    FS_ITC --> RPT
    FS_BC --> RPT
    FS_IF --> RPT

    RPT --> PRI
    RPT --> RET
    RPT --> ARCH

    style LeanIX fill:#e8f4f8
    style "Migration Decisions" fill:#f0f8e8

Dependency mapping for custom ABAP objects

The highest-value use of LeanIX in a migration programme is mapping the dependency graph between custom objects and the business applications and processes they support. This is the information that is almost never available in the ABAP code itself.

A Z-report that reads from MARA and generates a vendor-facing document is a technical object. But which business process does it serve? Which organisational unit owns it? Who is the business approver who needs to sign off on its retirement or modification? Without this mapping, technical remediation decisions get stuck waiting for business input that nobody has thought to request.

Build the mapping by combining:

1. Usage logs: SM20 or equivalent gives you which users or batch jobs execute each Z-program.
2. User master data: the executing users belong to organisational units with defined business owners.
3. Business process model: from Signavio or from your project’s process inventory.

With this data loaded into LeanIX, you can generate a heat map: custom programs plotted against business criticality (derived from process criticality) and technical risk (derived from ATC findings count and deprecated API severity). The top-right quadrant — high business criticality, high technical risk — is the remediation backlog. The bottom-left — low criticality, low or no usage — is the retirement list.

Practical integration setup

The cleanest implementation pattern for a migration programme:

1. Enable the EAM Connector in the first month. This gives you automatic SAP landscape topology in LeanIX without manual maintenance.
2. Run the Custom Code Migration Fiori App (transaction-based tool provided by SAP) to export the custom object inventory with usage data. Load this into LeanIX as Applications linked to their transport package (which maps to a business domain).
3. Import ATC results — at minimum, the S/4HANA readiness variant findings — as Fact Sheet quality attributes. A custom integration script can read the ATC XML export and create or update the corresponding LeanIX Fact Sheet.
4. Conduct a single business capability mapping workshop with IT and business leads. Two days of structured interviews, using the LeanIX Fact Sheets as the discussion artefact, will produce 80% of the business dependency data you need.

The result is a living portfolio view that any stakeholder can interrogate: “show me all custom objects that support the Order-to-Cash capability, have S/4HANA blockers, and are used at least monthly.” That is the input to a meaningful, defensible remediation plan.

---

SAP, S/4HANA, LeanIX, and related marks are trademarks of SAP SE. LeanIX is an SAP company.