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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Request for CommentsRiskiest Assumption TestAssumption Surfacing
| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Product Discovery Riskiest Assumption Test |  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. | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. | When an idea hinges on one critical unknown, it prioritizes testing that exact piece of uncertainty first. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence. The result is captured as a prioritized list of assumptions, a test plan, and a result report. | 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 | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 1-2 Wochen pro Iteration | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-20 Reviewer | 2-6 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Prioritized Assumption List, Test Plan, Results Report | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryAssumptions | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |