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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Decision Framing WorkshopATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)Trade-off Analysis
| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Decision Framing Workshop |  Architecture ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) |  Decision Making Trade-off 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. | When a decision is poorly framed, even good answers deliver little value. A Decision Framing Workshop sharpens the problem, goal, and boundaries before the actual weighing begins. | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 60-120 min | Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope | 45-120 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 4-10 | Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders | 2-8 |
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 | Decision Frame, Decision Question, Criteria List, Evidence Plan | Prioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigations | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Decision framingAlignmentCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions |