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| Criterion |  Engineering Golden Path |  Innovation Design Thinking |  Architecture C4 Model |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. | 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 | Medium | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Tage Setup, laufend | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen | 1-4 h | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 4-10 | 1-5 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Golden Path Guide, Templates, Quality Checks | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings | 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 | EngineeringProductivityGovernance | InnovationPrototypeResearch | ArchitectureCommunicationVisualization | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |