The Architecture Vision is created during the project initiation phase of a project. The purpose of the vision is to agree from the start what the desired outcome should be for the architecture.

The Architecture Vision is the enterprise architect's elevator pitch. It needs to simply and powerfully sell the benefits of the proposed architecture to decision-makers. It also needs to show how the proposed architecture will support business goals and strategy and stakeholder concerns and objectives.

Typical contents of an Architecture Vision are:

☛ Problem description

☛ Objectives

☛ Process descriptions

☛ Roles and actors

☛ Constraints

☛ IT principles

☛ Architecture overview

☛ Mapping of the proposed architecture to processes and requirements