A set of documentation, best practices, and tools from Microsoft that guides an organization's cloud strategy, planning, readiness, adoption, and governance. It defines phases: Team, Strategy, Plan, Ready, Adopt, Govern, Manage.
On AZ-305 this is the conceptual foundation for designing governance architectures and landing zones. The exam expects you to recognize which CAF phase a given activity belongs to (e.g., defining a naming convention → Ready phase). Don't confuse it with the Well-Architected Framework, which evaluates individual workloads.
Cloud Adoption Framework (CAF) is a concept that can show up on the exam. Check the full guide to see it in context.