Please read this scenario prior to answering the question
You are employed as an Enterprise Architect for a company that supplies products for industrial production automation. You are part of an Enterprise Architecture (EA) team that has responsibilities across the company.
The company has multiple manufacturing plants where it assembles both standard and customized products. Each of these plants operates its own planning and production scheduling systems, as well as applications and control systems that drive the automated production line.
During a recent management meeting, the agenda included discussion of how a competitor company had improved production efficiency by replacing multiple planning and scheduling systems with a single cloud-based system. This had reduced lifecycle costs through reduced duplication, lowered software maintenance costs, and supported incremental replacement. The CIO claimed the company's current systems architecture is already optimized. However, as the competitor has reported better financial results, the CEO has requested an investigation of a cloud-based solution.
In response, the Architecture Board approved a Request for Architecture Work to find out if such an architecture transformation would lead to efficiency improvements. You have been asked to help the architecture team with this project.
A concern of the plant managers is the safety and dependability of using a remote centralized system for planning and scheduling production. The system they choose must also be able to work with the local partners in the supply chain at each plant.
The company has an Enterprise Architecture (EA) practice and uses the TOGAF standard as the basis for its work. It has been running for many years and has established governance and development processes for EA. The Chief Information Officer (CIO) sponsors the Enterprise Architecture program.
Refer to the scenario
You have been asked to describe how you will start the architecture project.
Based on the TOGAF standard, which of the following is the best answer?
Submit