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Selected:ICE ScoringSAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)Smoke TestARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
| Criterion | ![]() Product Strategy ICE Scoring | ![]() Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) | ![]() Product Discovery Smoke Test | ![]() Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When ideas need sorting quickly, it condenses impact, confidence, and effort into one compact score. It connects customer value, product logic, and decision priorities. The result is captured as an ICE table and top-ideas list. | SAAM helps teams judge an architecture’s suitability for selected tasks and changes. It is particularly useful for examining modifiability and comparing architecture alternatives with clear reasoning. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | 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 | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 1-5 Tage | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | Nutzertraffic | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | ICE Table, Top Idea List | Domain functions mapped to components and connections, Quality attributes and evaluation criteria, Typical tasks and their effects on the architecture, Reasoned evaluation or comparison of alternatives | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions |
Tagsno overlap | PrioritizationScoringGrowthDecision | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |



