SMART — enumerated source for the Strategic Migration Assessment
Source: https://learn.microsoft.com/assessments/Strategic-Migration-Assessment/Framework version: Not versioned by Microsoft — SMART is a living interactive tool with no published release number. Treat the extraction date below as the version. Extracted: 2026-07-31 Verification method: Manual read of the SMART landing page plus the five CAF pages it draws on (full list in "Verification method" below). No API or transcript exists for SMART's own question text — see the warning below.
Enumerated 2026-07-31. Verification method and limits are stated below — read them before quoting any coverage number from this page.
The audit's DQ12 records why this file exists: "Writing rules against a framework you have not enumerated is how waf.storage.yaml happened" — a rule file scoring a WAF pillar that does not exist. smart.migration.yaml is written against this enumeration and nothing else, and every rule in it cites an item number from the tables below.
What SMART is
Microsoft's Strategic Migration Assessment and Readiness Tool (https://learn.microsoft.com/assessments/Strategic-Migration-Assessment/) — a 15-minute multiple-choice readiness questionnaire that prepares an organisation for a scale migration to Azure. It is listed under Plan in the Cloud Adoption Framework's tools and templates (https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/cloud-adoption-framework/resources/tools-templates), whose description names its subject areas: "business planning, training, security, and governance."
Verification method — and the one thing this enumeration is NOT
What was read (2026-07-31):
| Source | What it gave |
|---|---|
| The SMART assessment landing page | The tool's stated purpose and its four named subject areas |
| CAF Tools and templates | SMART's placement in the Plan phase |
CAF Plan your migration (migrate/plan-migration) | The five-step migration sequence and the readiness/skills step |
| CAF Select your cloud migration strategies | The 8 R's and the business-driver-to-strategy mapping |
CAF Build migration plan with Azure Migrate (migrate/concepts-migration-planning) | Assessment-driven prioritisation and the "start small" sequencing guidance |
| CAF Assess your workloads for cloud migration | The named discovery/assessment/migration tooling |
⚠️ Microsoft's own question TEXT and question NUMBERS are not published. SMART is delivered only as an interactive assessment; its items are not in the documentation, not in an API, and not extractable from the page, which renders a client-side application shell. Anyone claiming to have transcribed Microsoft's numbered SMART questions from documentation has invented them.
So this enumeration is the published CAF Migrate content SMART assesses readiness against, organised under SMART's four stated subject areas plus the two the CAF Migrate sequence adds. The SMART-* identifiers below are Scout's, stable and citable, and they are not Microsoft item numbers. Any coverage percentage published against this file must say so.
Shelf life. Microsoft is actively rewriting CAF pages (see the audit's §8 currency warnings). Re-verify before quoting, and re-date this page when you do.
The enumeration
A — Business planning (SMART subject area 1)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-A1 | Business goals for the migration are defined and agreed with stakeholders | plan/select-cloud-migration-strategy | ❌ Organisational |
| SMART-A2 | A business driver is identified per workload, and maps to one of the 8 R's | plan/select-cloud-migration-strategy | ❌ Organisational |
| SMART-A3 | A gap analysis exists between each workload's current and target state | plan/select-cloud-migration-strategy | ❌ Organisational |
| SMART-A4 | Migration waves are sequenced lowest-risk first, not all-at-once | migrate/concepts-migration-planning | ⚠️ Partial — assessment groups |
B — People, skills and training (SMART subject area 2)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-B1 | The team's Azure and migration-tooling skills have been evaluated | migrate/plan-migration | ❌ Organisational |
| SMART-B2 | External expertise is engaged where a capability gap was found | migrate/plan-migration | ❌ Organisational |
C — Migration process and tooling (the CAF Migrate sequence)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-C1 | An Azure Migrate project exists for the estate being migrated | migrate/concepts-migration-planning | ✅ Migration/AzureMigrateProjects |
| SMART-C2 | Discovery is running — a discovery site is registered and reporting | plan/assess-workloads-for-cloud-migration | ✅ Migration/AzureMigrateDiscoverySites |
| SMART-C3 | Assessments have been created, not just a project | migrate/assessment-report | ✅ Migration/AzureMigrateAssessments |
| SMART-C4 | Database workloads have a migration path — DMS or an equivalent | plan/assess-workloads-for-cloud-migration | ✅ Migration/DatabaseMigrationServices |
| SMART-C5 | Bulk data transfer is planned where the volume needs it (Data Box / Stack Edge) | plan/assess-workloads-for-cloud-migration | ✅ Migration/DataBox, Migration/StackEdge |
| SMART-C6 | Migrate projects are not left publicly reachable when private access was intended | migrate/migrate-services-overview | ✅ publicNetworkAccess on the project |
D — Landing zone readiness (CAF Ready, prerequisite of migrate/plan-migration)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-D1 | An Azure landing zone exists before workloads are migrated into it | migrate/plan-migration prerequisites | ✅ via the CAF: Azure Landing Zone assessment |
| SMART-D2 | Target subscriptions are organised under a management group hierarchy | CAF Ready | ✅ Management/ManagementGroups |
E — Security (SMART subject area 3)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-E1 | Migrated servers land under Defender for Cloud coverage | CAF Secure | ✅ Security/DefenderPricing |
| SMART-E2 | Migration tooling and target resources use private connectivity where required | CAF Ready | ✅ cross-resource rules (xr.*) |
F — Governance (SMART subject area 4)
| # | Item | Source | Scout can evidence? |
|---|---|---|---|
| SMART-F1 | Policy is applied to the target scope before workloads arrive | CAF Govern | ✅ Management/PolicyComplianceStates |
| SMART-F2 | Migrated workloads are brought under backup protection | CAF Manage — Define reliability requirements | ✅ cross-resource rule XR-BKP-01 |
What this means for the rule file
Six of the eighteen items are organisational — a tool reading ARM cannot evidence whether a business case was agreed. smart.migration.yaml marks those manual: true with the item cited, so they appear in the report as questions for the customer rather than silently disappearing. That is the difference between "SMART coverage is 12 of 18 automatable" and a fabricated score of 100%.