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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Growth A/B Testing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | When two variants compete, discussions quickly decide by taste rather than effect. A/B Testing checks behavior under controlled conditions and separates real improvement from chance or expectation effects. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope | 1-5 Tage | 1-4 Wochen |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders | Nutzertraffic | 1-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | 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 | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation |