This chapter will introduce you to the design factors and focus on the discovery phase of the design process.

The following image displays the phases of the design process:

Discovery is the most important phase of the design process. It is also the most time-consuming. The discovery process includes a meeting with the stakeholders to determine business requirements that the design must meet. It also includes current state assessments to determine the technical requirements that the design must satisfy in order to meet the customer requirements, which in turn become the design requirements.

During the discovery process, an architect must interact with many different individuals in an organization to collect the necessary information that is needed to begin creating the conceptual design. Decision makers, strategic planners, facilities and maintenance providers, network administrators, storage administrators, application administrators, and application end users can, in some way...