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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Architecture arc42 |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | arc42 structures architecture knowledge so teams can document system, decisions, and risks consistently. The template builds a living understanding of the architecture instead of scattered notes. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 1-2 Tage | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-20 Reviewer | 1-4 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |