What technique does TOGAF recommend for identifying and understanding the requirements that an architecture must address?

In the context of TOGAF, the recommended technique for identifying and understanding the requirements that an architecture must address is the use of business scenarios. Business scenarios provide a structured approach to capture requirements and understand the context in which the architecture will operate. They allow stakeholders to visualize potential situations, challenges, and opportunities, ensuring that the architecture is aligned with business goals and can respond effectively to real-world conditions.

Through the development of business scenarios, architects can gather insights about the needs of various stakeholders, prioritize requirements, and explore different perspectives, ultimately leading to a comprehensive understanding of what the architecture must achieve. This method emphasizes collaboration among stakeholders and helps in clarifying expectations and the desired outcomes of the architectural efforts.

Other techniques, while valuable in their own right, do not focus directly on identifying requirements in the same nuanced way. Stakeholder management is about involving and communicating with stakeholders, risk management deals with identifying and mitigating risks rather than defining requirements, and gap analysis focuses on comparing the current state with a desired future state to identify discrepancies, but does not provide the detailed contextual insights that business scenarios facilitate.