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Criterion
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
Design sheets and interface cards connect to jointly written pseudocode with highlighted unresolved questions.
Architecture
ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
Four paper stations connect system purpose, quality goals, risk cards and focused investigation with a target and gap profile.
Architecture
LASR (Lightweight Approach for Software Reviews)
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.LASR helps development teams identify where their software falls short of important quality goals and which improvements to consider. A small group with existing system knowledge can make an initial assessment and investigate open questions in more detail.
Complexitydifferent
LowMediumMedium
Timedifferent
20–45 min2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional3–4 h for initial assessment; preparation and deeper analysis additional
Participantsdifferent
Small cross-functional groupDesigners, developers as users, and facilitation1 or a small team; particularly suitable for 3–4 people
Formatdifferent
WorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logPrioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsLean Mission Statement describing the software’s purpose, Prioritized quality goals and evaluation criteria, Risks and estimated gaps against quality goals, More closely examined findings and open checks
Tagsno overlap
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
ArchitectureQualityRiskAssessmentLean
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.

Paper illustration: scenarios and architectural decisions are connected to identified risks.
Architecture
ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)
Paper illustration of a calibrated five-by-five risk matrix with response cards.
Decision Making
Risk Matrix
Paper illustration for Risk Storming.
Architecture
Risk Storming
Paper illustration of a calm four-quadrant Assumption Map with hypothesis cards and emphasis on important assumptions with little evidence.
Product Discovery
Assumption Mapping