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Criterion
Paper illustration: scenarios and architectural decisions are connected to identified risks.
Architecture
ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)
Anonymous individual judgments pass through feedback loops to form a distribution.
Decision Making
Delphi Method
Views and Beyond method illustration showing its working structure
Architecture
Views and Beyond
Paper illustration for Alignment Mapping.
Facilitation
Alignment Mapping
Purposedifferent
ATAM helps teams weigh architecture decisions when quality goals compete. The team considers business goals, stakeholder expectations, and technical decisions together. The evaluation shows which risks need further investigation.When knowledge is distributed and direct dominance should be avoided, groups quickly fall under the sway of their opinion leaders. The Delphi Method gathers assessments iteratively and gradually brings expert judgments closer together.Views and Beyond organizes architecture into several views so no single diagram has to do everything at once. This makes it possible to choose the representation that fits the stakeholder's question.When several people work toward one goal but hold different mental maps, Alignment Mapping makes the discrepancies visible. It arranges goals, assumptions, and priorities so shared direction becomes verifiable.
Complexitydifferent
HighHighMediumMedium
Timedifferent
Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope1-4 Wochen1-3 Tage1-2 h
Participantsdifferent
Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders6-30 Experten1-44-12
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncAsyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop
Outputdifferent
Prioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigationsExpert Forecast, Consensus Range, Assumption NotesArchitecture Views, Cross-view Notes, RationaleAlignment Map, Open Issues, Decision Questions
Tagsno overlap
ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders
ForecastingExpertsDecisionStrategy
DocumentationStakeholdersArchitecture
AlignmentStakeholdersStrategyFacilitation
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