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| Criterion |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Architecture arc42 |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 45-90 min | 1-2 Tage |
Participantsdifferent | 3-20 Reviewer | 4-12 | 1-4 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | Architecture Document, Context View, Runtime View, Deployment View |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | ArchitectureDocumentationCommunication |
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