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Criterion
A hypothetical failure makes concrete risks, signals, and fitting mitigations visible.
Decision Making
Pre-Mortem
Paper illustration for Trade-off Analysis.
Decision Making
Trade-off Analysis
Four paper stations connect system purpose, quality goals, risk cards and focused investigation with a target and gap profile.
Architecture
LASR (Lightweight Approach for Software Reviews)
Paper illustration for Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint Analysis
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.With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects.LASR helps development teams identify where their software falls short of important quality goals and which improvements to consider. A small group with existing system knowledge can make an initial assessment and investigate open questions in more detail.When an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped.
Complexitydifferent
LowMediumMediumLow
Timedifferent
20–45 min45-120 min3–4 h for initial assessment; preparation and deeper analysis additional30-90 min
Participantsdifferent
Small cross-functional group2-81 or a small team; particularly suitable for 3–4 people2-8
Formatdifferent
WorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption logTrade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted DownsidesLean Mission Statement describing the software’s purpose, Prioritized quality goals and evaluation criteria, Risks and estimated gaps against quality goals, More closely examined findings and open checksConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries
Tagsno overlap
RiskDecisionFailurePlanning
TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions
ArchitectureQualityRiskAssessmentLean
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
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