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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Current Reality TreeChange AnalysisSAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)
| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |  Operations Change Analysis |  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. | 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. | 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. | 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 | Medium | High | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 2-6 h | 45-120 min | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-8 | 2-6 | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | 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 | Change Matrix, Cause Hypotheses, Validation Questions, Action List | Domain 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 | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | ChangeRoot causeTroubleshootingComparison | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality |