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Selected:Pre-MortemARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Architecture Decision RecordRequest for Comments
| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Architecture Request for Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | 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. | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 15-45 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 1-3 | 3-20 Reviewer |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance |