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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Evaporating CloudCausal Factor AnalysisCurrent Reality Tree
| Criterion | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) | ![]() Systems Thinking Evaporating Cloud | ![]() Operations Causal Factor Analysis | ![]() Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | The method makes visible why two seemingly incompatible demands arise and which assumption must be tested to resolve the conflict. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | High |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 60-120 min | 2-6 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 | 3-10 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Conflict Cloud, Assumption List, Breakthrough Ideas, Next Experiments | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Theory of ConstraintsAssumptionsSystems thinking | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality |



