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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Current Reality Tree Architecture Decision Record Causal Factor Analysis

Criterion	Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)	Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree	Architecture Architecture Decision Record	Operations Causal Factor Analysis
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.	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.	An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable.	For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events.
Complexitydifferent	Medium	High	Low	High
Timedifferent	2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional	2-6 h	15-45 min	2-6 h
Participantsdifferent	Designers, developers as users, and facilitation	3-8	1-3	3-10
Formatdifferent	Workshop + async	Workshop	Async	Workshop + async
Outputdifferent	Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions	Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas	ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale	Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions
Tagsno overlap	ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks	Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality	ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance	CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline

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