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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  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. | 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. | 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 | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 15-45 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 1-3 | 3-20 Reviewer |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance |