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Criterion
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
Paper illustration: scenarios and architectural decisions are connected to identified risks.
Architecture
ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method)
Paper illustration for Smoke Test.
Product Discovery
Smoke Test
Paper illustration for Fake Door Test
Product Discovery
Fake Door Test
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 demand is still unclear, it measures interest in a feature before it is built. It separates real behavior from polite agreement and deliberately keeps build effort small.
Complexitydifferent
LowHighLowMedium
Timedifferent
20–45 minSeveral meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope1-5 Tage1-5 Tage
Participantsdifferent
Small cross-functional groupEvaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholdersNutzertrafficNutzertraffic
Formatdifferent
WorkshopWorkshop + asyncAsyncAsync
Outputdifferent
Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logPrioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigationsInterest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning NoteClick Data, Interest Signal, Learning Decision
Tagsno overlap
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders
ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth
ValidationExperimentsDemandDiscovery
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