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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)A/B TestingSmoke Test
| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Architecture ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) |  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. | ATAM helps teams weigh architecture decisions when quality goals compete. The team considers business goals, stakeholder expectations, and technical decisions together. The evaluation shows which risks need further investigation. | 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 | High | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope | 1-4 Wochen | 1-5 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders | 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 | Prioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigations | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth |