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Selected:Golden CircleARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Architecture Decision RecordC4 Model
| Criterion | ![]() Growth Golden Circle | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) | ![]() Architecture Architecture Decision Record | ![]() Architecture C4 Model |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In positioning and communication, what an offering actually stands for often becomes blurred. The Golden Circle sharpens a product's inner rationale and connects purpose, approach, and offering into a clear statement. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 15-45 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 1-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 1-3 | 1-5 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Why Statement, Messaging Notes, Positioning Draft | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Context Diagram, Container Diagram, Component Diagram |
Tagsno overlap | MarketingPositioningCommunication | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | ArchitectureCommunicationVisualization |



