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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  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. | SAAM helps teams judge an architecture’s suitability for selected tasks and changes. It is particularly useful for examining modifiability and comparing architecture alternatives with clear reasoning. | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | 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 | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 30-60 min | 2-8 h |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Domain functions mapped to components and connections, Quality attributes and evaluation criteria, Typical tasks and their effects on the architecture, Reasoned evaluation or comparison of alternatives | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | Root causeQualityOperations | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations |