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Selected:SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method)ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Root Cause AnalysisRoot Cause Tree Analysis
| Criterion |  Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Root Cause Tree Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | For a problem with several suspected causes, the method builds a causal structure instead of a mere list. It makes visible how causes connect and where the strongest points of leverage lie. |
Complexitydifferent | High | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 1-4 h | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | 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 | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Cause Tree, Evidence Notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeTreeIncidentQuality |