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| Criterion |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Risk Matrix |  Product Discovery Test Card |  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. | When a project faces many possible disruptions, it quickly becomes unclear which risks deserve attention first. It separates options, evaluation criteria, and open risks. The result is captured as a Risk Matrix and a Top Risk List. | The Test Card turns a critical assumption into a testable claim and specifies in advance which result counts as success. | 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 | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 30-60 min | 20-35 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-10 | 1-5 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Risk Matrix, Top Risk List | Test Card with a pre-set threshold | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | RiskDecisionPrioritizationAssessment | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryHypothesis | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |