Many organizations still operate their business based on old legacy systems which cause high maintenance costs and are difficult to change. After the hype about service-oriented architectures (SOAs) was gone, they were implemented successfully and helped replacing old legacy systems with flexible services, for example at large companies in the finance or logistics industry. While recent research and the pattern literature cover the technical aspects of SOA and the alignment between business and IT, defining and planning a roadmap for a SOA modernization program, which is essential for initiating such a program and getting the necessary commitment, has not been in the focus of research yet. Thus, we propose a design process for the definition of a high-level roadmap. It considers determining architectural decisions and planning decisions by selecting appropriate patterns and reference architectures. Furthermore we define a heuristic for the roadmap planning activities, because we see a lack of appropriate planning patterns. A case study explains how the roadmap design process has been applied in a large-scale industry project concerning a SOA modernization program of a global logistics provider. The pattern-based process should motivate pursuing further research about roadmap design processes and patterns and provide guidance for industry experts.

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