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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Risk StormingTrade-off AnalysisAssumption Surfacing
| Criterion | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) | ![]() Architecture Risk Storming | ![]() Decision Making Trade-off Analysis | ![]() 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. | Helps clarify architecture context, options, and consequences in concrete terms. It organizes technical context, alternatives, and consequences. The result is captured as an Annotated Diagram, a Prioritized Risk List, and an Action Backlog. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | 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 | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 60-90 min | 45-120 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 4-12 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Annotated Diagram, Prioritized Risk List, Action Backlog | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | RiskArchitectureWorkshopValidation | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |



