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| Criterion | ![]() Decision Making Argument Mapping | ![]() Agile Sailboat Retrospective | ![]() Architecture Architecture Decision Record | ![]() Agile Starfish Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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 a team wants to read momentum, brakes, and risks together, it offers an easily understandable picture of the situation. It makes drive, obstacles, and headwind visible in the same picture. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | 45-90 min | 15-45 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-8 | 4-12 | 1-3 | 4-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Argument Map, Evidence Gaps, Decision Rationale | Sailboat Board, Risks, Improvement Actions | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments |
Tagsno overlap | SensemakingDecisionRationale | RetrospectiveTeamImprovement | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam |



