Universal Containers CUC) is embarked on a large Salesforce transformation journey, UC's DevOps team raised...

To track Salesforce metadata throughout the development lifecycle across sandboxes and production, the architect should recommend using an AppExchange or third-party tool that is specialized in Salesforce deployment. These tools can provide features such as version control, dependency analysis, automated testing, and rollback capabilities. Using an Excel sheet to track deployment steps and document the SFDX commands is not a reliable or scalable solution, as it is prone to human errors and does not provide any automation or validation. Using ChangeSet to track deployed customizations is also not a good option, as ChangeSet is limited in the types of metadata it can deploy and does not support versioning or dependency management. Using Salesforce SFDX commands to deploy to different sandboxes is a possible solution, but it requires a high level of technical expertise and does not provide a graphical interface or reporting capabilities.