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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)
Paper illustration for Smoke Test.
Product Discovery
Smoke Test
Paper illustration with architecture components and concrete change tasks for comparison.
Architecture
SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)
Paper illustration of a calm four-quadrant Assumption Map with hypothesis cards and emphasis on important assumptions with little evidence.
Product Discovery
Assumption Mapping
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 demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all.SAAM helps teams judge an architecture’s suitability for selected tasks and changes. It is particularly useful for examining modifiability and comparing architecture alternatives with clear reasoning.When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first.
Complexitydifferent
MediumLowHighMedium
Timedifferent
2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional1-5 TagePreparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope45-60 min
Participantsdifferent
Designers, developers as users, and facilitationNutzertrafficArchitecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting2-8
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncAsyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsInterest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning NoteDomain functions mapped to components and connections, Quality attributes and evaluation criteria, Typical tasks and their effects on the architecture, Reasoned evaluation or comparison of alternativesAssumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth
ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality
AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation
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