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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)
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
Paper illustration for Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint Analysis
Paper illustration of an assumption matrix with prioritized test cards
Decision Making
Assumption Surfacing
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.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.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.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.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowLowLow
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional20–45 min30-90 min45-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitationSmall cross-functional group2-82-8
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsRisk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision BoundariesAssumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery
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