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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Risk Storming |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 20–45 min | 60-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | Small cross-functional group | 4-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Annotated Diagram, Prioritized Risk List, Action Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | RiskArchitectureWorkshopValidation |