Develop a cloud adoption plan

The Cloud Adoption Framework's (CAF) Plan methodology provides a framework for planning your cloud adoption. Use the following checklist to see the tasks associated with each step of the CAF Plan guidance. Navigate quickly to detailed guidance through provided links.

Required: You need define your cloud strategy before you begin cloud adoption planning. Your cloud strategy identifies the business drivers behind your cloud adoption efforts. Business drivers clarify why your organization is adopting the cloud and how to do it.

Cloud adoption planning steps	Startup tasks	Enterprise tasks
1. Prepare your organization	Choose an operating model	1. Understand your cloud responsibilities 2. Choose an operating model 3. Document cloud responsibilities
2. Prepare your people	Understand required skills	1. Understand required skills 2. Close the skills gap 3. Sustain cloud skills
3. Plan migration	Not applicable	1. Discover your inventory 2. Select migration strategies 3. Assess your workloads
4. Estimate cloud costs	Plan your architecture	1. Plan your architecture 2. Estimate costs
5. Document the adoption plan	Cloud-native adoption plan	Migration adoption plan

Understand the importance of cloud adoption planning

A cloud adoption plan ensures your Azure environment aligns with your business priorities. It provides a structured approach to prepare your organization, people, and technology for cloud adoption. This structure helps you reduce risk, control costs, and accelerate value realization. Cloud adoption planning applies to all organizations:

Organization Type	Purpose
Startups	Build cloud-native applications in Azure. See eligibility for Azure credits
Enterprises	Migrate existing workloads from on-premises or other cloud platforms like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others.

Next steps

Prepare your organization for Azure