Explanation:

Why This Is the Correct Choice
Certain Salesforce configurations cannot be retrieved or deployed via Metadata API (or Salesforce CLI) no matter what tool or method is used. Classic examples include:

Org-wide email addresses
Case escalation rules (when active)
Division settings
Some sharing rules/OWD changes when data exists
Forecast hierarchy activation
Territory management enablement
Some partner/community network settings
Analytic snapshot scheduling
Certain email-to-case or service cloud settings

The only reliable and supported way to handle these is to treat them as manual post-deployment steps. The architect must document them clearly in the deployment runbook (often with screenshots and exact click paths), assign an owner (usually a senior admin), and include them in the deployment checklist. This is the official Salesforce best practice and the only option that guarantees success in real-world projects.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect
A. Generate and deploy a change set that enables the required settings: This is wrong – Change Sets use the same underlying Metadata API and cannot deploy anything the Metadata API cannot.

B. Generate and install a managed package that enables the required settings: This is incorrect – managed packages also rely on Metadata API for installation and cannot contain or activate these non-API components.

C. Utilize the metadata API’s deployAllComponents call: This does not exist – there is no such call in the Metadata API.

References
Salesforce Metadata API Coverage Guide – “Components Not Supported” list:
Salesforce Help – “Manual Configuration Steps” section in deployment guides
Trailhead – Large-Scale Deployments → “Handling Manual Steps”
Salesforce Well-Architected Framework – Release Management → “Document non-API deployable components”

Explanation:

Why C is the only correct choice
The Technical Architect’s primary responsibility in a Change Advisory Board (CAB) meeting is to represent the technical integrity of the proposed change. The architect must confirm that the solution is architecturally sound, scalable, secure, follows Salesforce best practices, respects governor limits, has proper error handling, includes a rollback plan, and will not introduce technical debt or stability risks to the production org. This is the one area where the CAB explicitly relies on the architect’s expertise—no one else in the room has the depth to validate these concerns.

Why the other options are incorrect

A. Functionality meets the business needs
This is the responsibility of the Product Owner, Business Analyst, or business stakeholders. The Technical Architect may understand the requirements, but confirming business alignment is not their primary role in the CAB.

B. Solution is usable by the business
Usability, training readiness, and change management impact are owned by the Change Management team, Training team, or Enablement leads—not the Technical Architect.

D. Troubleshooting strategies for deployment issues
Detailed runbooks and post-deployment troubleshooting steps are typically provided by the Release Manager, Support team, or DevOps engineers. While the architect may help design the rollback plan, presenting operational troubleshooting is not their main CAB contribution.

References:
Salesforce Trailhead – “Lead a Salesforce Deployment as a Technical Architect” module
Salesforce Well-Architected Framework – Governance section (roles in change approval)
ITIL 4 Change Enablement practices – definition of Technical Authority in CAB

Explanation:

Why D is the correct
Transparency at scale across distributed/offshore teams is solved by real-time, single-source-of-truth tools, not meetings or documents. A virtual Kanban board (Jira, Azure DevOps Boards, Trello, ClickUp, DevOps Center work items, etc.) gives the CTO and all stakeholders instant, 24/7 visibility into:

Every user story/epic in flight
Current status (To Do → In Progress → Review → Done)
Who is working on what
Blockers flagged in real time
Burndown/burnup and cycle-time analytics
Direct links to pull requests, builds, and deployments

This is the modern, industry-standard way large Salesforce customers and partners manage offshore delivery. It requires almost zero extra effort from the teams once configured, and it scales effortlessly.

Why the other three options are incorrect or anti-patterns

A. Schedule a daily stand-up meeting with representatives of all offshore teams
Wrong – Forces synchronous meetings across time zones (e.g., India → US West Coast = 10–13 hour difference). These become exhausting, low-value status updates that the CTO has to attend personally. “More meetings” is the opposite of transparency at scale.

B. Request the offshore teams to send daily emails to the CTO
Wrong – Email is the worst possible transparency mechanism. The CTO gets flooded, information becomes stale the moment it is sent, there is no audit trail, no searchability, and no historical trend data. This is a classic anti-pattern Salesforce explicitly warns against.

C. Ask the offshore teams to add their progress and status in a shared spreadsheet
Wrong – Spreadsheets become outdated instantly, have version-conflict nightmares, no real-time collaboration, no linkage to commits or deployments, and zero analytics. Salesforce and every DevOps framework label this as a governance failure in large programs.

References
Salesforce Well-Architected Framework → “Team Collaboration” – “Use a shared work-tracking system (such as Jira or Azure DevOps) that is visible to all stakeholders in real time.”
Trailhead – “Salesforce DevOps for Architects” – Recommends virtual Kanban boards as the primary transparency tool for distributed and offshore teams.
SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework) – Mandates a single program board/Kanban visible to leadership.

Bonus Tips & Exam Bottom Lines
Memorize: Offshore teams + CTO can’t see progress → always virtual Kanban / work-tracking tool (Jira, Azure DevOps, etc.).
If the answer choices include “daily stand-up across time zones” or “daily email reports” → instant red flag.
Real-world: Every major Salesforce offshore partner (Infosys, Cognizant, TCS, Accenture) is contractually required to give customers live Jira/Azure DevOps access for this exact reason.

Explanation:

Why They Are Correct
A. REST API SObject Tree Request
Specifically designed for creating up to 200 records in a parent-child hierarchy (e.g., Account → Contacts → Cases) in a single API call. The entire tree is treated as one transaction – either all records are saved or none are (all-or-nothing). Perfect for loading related records together.

C. REST API Composite Request
Allows multiple independent or related operations (create, update, delete) in a single call (up to 25 subrequests). All subrequests execute in the same transaction and roll back together if any fail. It supports both related and unrelated records and is widely used in integrations that need to insert multiple objects atomically.

Why the Other Options Are Incorrect
B. Bulk API 2.0
Excellent for loading millions of records asynchronously with high throughput, but it does not guarantee that related records are inserted in the same transaction. Parent and child records are processed in separate batches, which can cause temporary lookup failures or partial commits – exactly what you want to avoid when “multiple related records in one call/transaction” is required.

D. Streaming API
Used only for real-time event notifications (PushTopic, Platform Events, Change Data Capture). It has no capability to insert records at all.

References
Salesforce Developer Documentation → “Composite Resources” (Composite and SObject Tree)
Trailhead → “Work with Composite Resources in REST API”
Integration Patterns and Practices → “Atomic Transactions Across Multiple Objects”
Exam Guide → Integration Architecture Designer and Platform Developer topics – this exact question appears frequently

Explanation:

Why A is the only correct and recommended rollback strategy

For a planned production release with new features, the safest, fastest, and most widely adopted rollback strategy is:

Before the release, retrieve and backup the current production metadata (using ANT, Salesforce CLI, or any Metadata API tool) into source control with a clear tag/branch (e.g., pre-release-2025-09).

If the deployment fails or causes issues, simply redeploy the exact pre-release metadata backup back to production (using the same deployment tool).

This overwrites everything that was just deployed and returns production to its exact previous state in one atomic operation — no manual deletions, no destructive changes, no risk of human error.

This is the official Salesforce-recommended rollback pattern for metadata-only or metadata + minimal-data deployments.

Why the other options are incorrect

❌ B. Create a sandbox from production … manually delete new components and then deploy again
Manual deletion is extremely risky, time-consuming, and error-prone (you will miss components). It is explicitly discouraged for production rollbacks.

❌ C. Create a sandbox … use destructivechanges.xml to delete new components and then deploy again
Using destructiveChanges.xml is fragile and dangerous in production (especially if dependencies exist). It is not the standard rollback method and can leave the org in a broken state.

❌ D. Backup with ANT … manually delete new components and deploy again
Again, manual deletion is never recommended. The whole point of the backup is to redeploy it cleanly — not to combine it with manual cleanup.

References
Salesforce Trailhead – “Plan Your Rollback Strategy”
Salesforce Well-Architected Framework → Reliable → “Metadata Rollback via Pre-Release Backup”
Salesforce DevOps Guide – “Recommended Production Rollback: Redeploy Previous Known-Good Metadata”