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| Criterion | ![]() Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check | ![]() Engineering Golden Path | ![]() Architecture C4 Model | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | The 5-Minute VC Check clarifies opportunities and strategic options at the earliest idea stage. It compares problem quality, customer willingness to pay, alternatives, differentiation, and market potential, and captures the result as a VC-check note, go/sharpen/park decision, and risk list. | When teams need a reliable default path for frequent use, sprawl quickly emerges without any guiding logic. Golden Path bundles the preferred path so good practice becomes easy and deviation becomes deliberate. | The C4 Model makes a system legible across several resolution levels, from context down to code. It suits situations where different audiences need to understand the same architecture from different altitudes. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 5-15 min | 1-3 Tage Setup, laufend | 1-4 h | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | 1-5 | 2-8 | 1-5 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | VC-check note, Go/sharpen/park decision, Risk and assumption list, Next validation step | Golden Path Guide, Templates, Quality Checks | Context Diagram, Container Diagram, Component Diagram | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions |
Tagsno overlap | StartupValidationCompetition | EngineeringProductivityGovernance | ArchitectureCommunicationVisualization | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |



