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| Criterion |  Facilitation Mind Mapping |  Architecture Risk Storming |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a topic is still unclear and too many thoughts surface at once, Mind Mapping creates an open surface for ordering them. It makes connections, subtopics, and starting points visible without fixing them too early. | Helps clarify architecture context, options, and consequences in concrete terms. It organizes technical context, alternatives, and consequences. The result is captured as an Annotated Diagram, a Prioritized Risk List, and an Action Backlog. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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 | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 15-45 min | 60-90 min | 45-60 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional |
Participantsdifferent | 1-10 | 4-12 | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Mind Map, Topic Clusters, Open Questions | Annotated Diagram, Prioritized Risk List, Action Backlog | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions |
Tagsno overlap | BrainstormingIdeasMappingStructureFacilitation | RiskArchitectureWorkshopValidation | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks |