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| Criterion |  Architecture arc42 |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Growth A/B Testing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 1-2 Tage | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-5 Tage | 1-4 Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | 1-4 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Nutzertraffic | 1-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation |