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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | ATAM helps teams weigh architecture decisions when quality goals compete. The team considers business goals, stakeholder expectations, and technical decisions together. The evaluation shows which risks need further investigation. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | For a disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope | 1-4 h | 2-8 h |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Prioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigations | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations |