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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)
Paper illustration for Change Analysis.
Operations
Change Analysis
Paper illustration for Current Reality Tree
Systems Thinking
Current Reality Tree
Paper illustration with architecture components and concrete change tasks for comparison.
Architecture
SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)
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 deviation after a change, the method isolates the influence of the altered condition. It narrows down which differences are relevant and which are just accompanying noise.A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once.SAAM helps teams judge an architecture’s suitability for selected tasks and changes. It is particularly useful for examining modifiability and comparing architecture alternatives with clear reasoning.
Complexitydifferent
MediumMediumHighHigh
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional45-120 min2-6 hPreparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitation2-63-8Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsChange Matrix, Cause Hypotheses, Validation Questions, Action ListCurrent Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention IdeasDomain functions mapped to components and connections, Quality attributes and evaluation criteria, Typical tasks and their effects on the architecture, Reasoned evaluation or comparison of alternatives
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ChangeRoot causeTroubleshootingComparison
Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality
ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality
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