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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Operations After-Action Review |  Growth A/B Testing |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | After missions or project phases with unclear outcomes, the method makes visible what actually happened and what can be learned from it. It separates course, effect, and causes so experience turns into solid improvement. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 20-45 min | 1-4 Wochen | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-12 | 1-6 | Nutzertraffic |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Lessons learned, Action items, Event summary | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | LearningOperationsImprovement | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |