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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)
Process Mapping method illustration showing its working structure
Operations
Process Mapping
Paper illustration for Starfish Retrospective
Agile
Starfish Retrospective
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.With a confusing workflow that has many handoffs, the method makes the actual process visible. It shows where work is passed on, delayed, or duplicated, so improvement targets the right spots.When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued.
Complexitydifferent
MediumMediumLow
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional1-3 h45-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitation3-104-12
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsProcess Map, Handoff List, Improvement BacklogStarfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ProcessOperationsImprovement
RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam
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Often compared together

Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.

Paper illustration for Sailboat Retrospective
Agile
Sailboat Retrospective
Paper illustration of a team retrospective with three separate Start, Stop, and Continue areas and a shared action list.
Agile
Start Stop Continue
A structured reflection surfaces what was liked, learned, lacked, and longed for. It is a conversation format and does not validate actions automatically.
Agile
4Ls Retrospective