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| Criterion |  Agile Mad Sad Glad |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Agile Start Stop Continue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a team's or workshop's mood needs to become readable, it structures emotional signals with little setup. It makes strain, relief, and sources of energy tangible. | 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. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. | When a team wants to deliberately adjust its working behavior, it makes habits visible and assessable. It focuses on concrete changes instead of diffuse mood. |
Complexitysame | Low | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 15-45 min | 45-90 min | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 1-3 | 4-12 | 3-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Emotion Board, Themes, Action Items | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | Start Stop Continue Board, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveTeamReflection | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | RetrospectiveImprovementTeamReflection |