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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Business Strategy GAP Analysis |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | GAP Analysis compares the current state with a target picture and makes the distance manageable. It becomes useful when, ahead of new initiatives, it must become clear which capabilities, processes, or resources are missing. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-3 h | 45-90 min | 20–45 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Gap Matrix, Action Plan, Risk Notes | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | StrategyAnalysisPlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning |