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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 of a decision table with criteria rows, weighted ratings, and a narrowly leading alternative.
Decision Making
Decision Matrix
Paper illustration for Trade-off Analysis.
Decision Making
Trade-off Analysis
Paper illustration for Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint 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 several options collide with several criteria, comparison quickly becomes subjective. A Decision Matrix makes the trade-off visible and brings weighting, criteria, and options into a shared logic.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.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.
Complexitydifferent
MediumMediumMediumLow
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional45-90 min45-120 min30-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitation2-82-82-8
Formatsame
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsDecision Matrix, Scoring Rationale, Selected OptionTrade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted DownsidesConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
DecisionCriteriaScoringTradeoffs
TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
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