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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Operations ALPEN Method |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | With an overloaded day full of too many tasks, a realistic picture of the day emerges. The method connects estimating, deciding, and buffer thinking so planning fits available energy and time. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 10-20 min daily | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 1 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + 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 | Daily Plan, Time Estimates, Review Notes | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | PlanningTime managementProductivityOperations | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |