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| Criterion |  Architecture arc42 |  Decision Making Argument Mapping |  Growth A/B Testing |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | arc42 structures architecture knowledge so teams can document system, decisions, and risks consistently. The template builds a living understanding of the architecture instead of scattered notes. | When statements, evidence, and counterarguments get mixed up, a debate quickly loses its structure. Argument Mapping breaks a thesis down into its reasoning and makes visible what it really rests on. | When two variants compete, discussions quickly decide by taste rather than effect. A/B Testing checks behavior under controlled conditions and separates real improvement from chance or expectation effects. | ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | High | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-2 Tage | 1-3 h | 1-4 Wochen | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | 1-4 | 1-8 | 1-6 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View | Argument Map, Evidence Gaps, Decision Rationale | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication | SensemakingDecisionRationale | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |