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Selected:ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Stock and Flow Diagram Root Cause Analysis Causal Loop Diagram

Criterion	Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)	Systems Thinking Stock and Flow Diagram	Operations Root Cause Analysis	Systems Thinking Causal Loop Diagram
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.	A Stock and Flow Diagram shows how stocks, inflows, and outflows shape a system over time. It is especially suited when growth, delays, or capacity limits determine the dynamics.	When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another.	A Causal Loop Diagram makes feedback, reinforcement, and balance in a system legible. It uncovers side effects and self-reinforcement that stay hidden in linear explanations.
Complexitydifferent	Medium	High	Medium	Medium
Timedifferent	2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional	2-6 h	1-4 h	1-3 h
Participantsdifferent	Designers, developers as users, and facilitation	1-6	3-8	2-8
Formatdifferent	Workshop + async	Workshop + async	Workshop + async	Workshop
Outputdifferent	Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions	Stock and Flow Model, Dynamics Notes, Simulation Hypotheses	Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan	Causal Loop Diagram, Feedback Notes, Leverage Points
Tagsno overlap	ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks	DynamicsSimulationFeedbackSystems thinking	Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident	FeedbackSystems thinkingCausalityDynamics

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