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Criterion
Design sheets and interface cards connect to jointly written pseudocode with highlighted unresolved questions.
Architecture
ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
A 5 Whys working surface connects an observable problem with evidenced causes, marked uncertainty and concrete countermeasures with ownership.
Operations
5 Whys
Paper illustration for Fault Isolation.
Engineering
Fault Isolation
Paper illustration for Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting.
Engineering
Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting
Purposedifferent
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.For a single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description.In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected.When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowMediumMedium
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional15-30 min30-180 min30-240 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitation2-61-61-6
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsRoot cause notes, CountermeasuresFault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault AreaHypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving
TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering
TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis
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