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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 15-45 min | 45-120 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 1-3 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions |
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