Scenario: Glacier Ridge LLC Please read this scenario prior to answering the question

Glacier Ridge LLC is a vacation property management firm that is growing through acquisition. It manages over 200 resort properties across North America. Many of the resort properties use the same internal IT systems that they used before they were acquired. Until recently, the only requirement that has been placed in each property is that they use a standard financial reporting system to report their financials ID the headquarters on a weekly basis.

The CEO has stated his concerns about the inefficiencies of the current approach and identified the need to change. He has defined a new strategic vision that will enhance the Glacier Ridge property business by standardizing its operations across the network to provide consolidated financial, human resources, logistics, sales and marketing, and yield management. He has also stated that he expects results by the end of the current fiscal year.

These changes will provide the company with improved utilization of its capacity and more efficient operations. The addition of a corporate-wide data warehouse will provide analytics that will enable the marketing group to improve its ability to target advertising into key markets to improve yields.

Glacier Ridge has a mature enterprise architecture (EA) practice and uses TOGAF 9 as the method and guiding framework. The CIO is the sponsor of the activity.

In planning this change, the Chief Architect engaged the services of a well-known consulting firm that specializes in business strategy. An initial study has been conducted to identify the strategic changes needed to implement the CEOs vision. This recently completed with approval of a strategic architecture encompassing the entire firm, including detailed requirements and recommendations.

Based on the recommendations from the initial engagement, Glacier Ridge has embraced an Architecture Vision to adopt an enterprise application that is tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry.

Refer to the Glacier Ridge scenario

Your role is that of Chief Architect. You have been asked to recommend the best approach to take in this architecture engagement to realize the CEOs vision.

Based on TOGAF 9, which of the following is the best answer?

A. Since the initial engagement has identified the need to change, you recommend that the team focus on defining the target architecture by going through the architecture definition phases (B-D). This will ensure that the change can be defined in a structured manner and address the requirements needed to realize the vision.

B. Since the vision is well understood and the strategic architecture agreed, you recommend that the target architecture is defined first, followed by transition planning. This will ensure that the current inefficiencies of the baseline architecture are not carried forward, and that the proposed solution addresses the requirements identified in the initial architecture engagement.

C. You recommend that this engagement define the Technology Architecture first in order to assess the current infrastructure capacity and capability. Then the focus should be on transition planning and architecture deployment. This will identify requirements to ensure that the projects are sequenced in an optimal fashion so as to realize the vision.

D. You recommend that the team focus on architecture definition, with a specific emphasis on understanding the strategic change parameters of the business strategy. Once understood, the team will be in the best position to identify the requirements, drivers, issues, and constraints for this engagement. You would ensure that the target architecture addresses non-functional requirements so as to help forecast future impacts.