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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 Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint Analysis
Paper matrix with six colored hat cards for information, feeling, value, caution, ideas and process control.
Facilitation
Six Thinking Hats
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.When an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped.When a topic gets stuck too quickly in the same thinking mode, Six Thinking Hats deliberately separates the perspectives. This means facts, risks, creativity, and emotional signals get worked through one after another instead of mixed together.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowMedium
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional30-90 min45-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitation2-84-12
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision BoundariesPerspective Notes, Decision Inputs, Action Items
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
FacilitationOptionsDecision
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Often compared together

Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.

Paper illustration of the Lightning Decision Jam working structure.
Facilitation
Decision Jam
Decision Tree method illustration showing its working structure
Decision Making
Decision Tree
Paper notes move from an inbox to action, project and calendar collections.
Operations
Getting Things Done
Paper illustration of MVP Test Matrix with a method-specific labelled workspace.
Product Discovery
MVP Test Matrix