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Criterion
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
A paper-based illustration representing arc42 with its core stages and visible working result.
Architecture
arc42
Paper illustration for Trade-off Analysis.
Decision Making
Trade-off Analysis
Paper illustration for Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint 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.arc42 structures architecture knowledge so teams can document system, decisions, and risks consistently. The template builds a living understanding of the architecture instead of scattered notes.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.When an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped.
Complexitydifferent
LowLowMediumLow
Timedifferent
20–45 min1-2 Tage45-120 min30-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Small cross-functional group1-42-82-8
Formatdifferent
WorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logArchitecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment ViewTrade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted DownsidesConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries
Tagsno overlap
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication
TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
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