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Selected:Assumption SurfacingARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Architecture Decision RecordAssumption Mapping
| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | 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 ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 15-45 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 1-3 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |