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| Criterion |  Decision Making Decision Matrix |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Architecture Request for Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When several options collide with several criteria, comparison quickly becomes subjective. A Decision Matrix makes the trade-off visible and brings weighting, criteria, and options into a shared logic. | 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 RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-20 Reviewer |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Decision Matrix, Scoring Rationale, Selected Option | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets |
Tagsno overlap | DecisionCriteriaScoringTradeoffs | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
