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| Criterion |  Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) |  Delivery Cost of Delay |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |  Decision Making Decision Tree |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | Helps clarify scope, order, and delivery flow in concrete terms. It makes work, constraints, and sequence manageable. The result is captured as a Cost of Delay table and prioritization sequence. | 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. | For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch. |
Complexitydifferent | High | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 90-180 min | 30-90 min | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | 3-8 | 2-8 | 1-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
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 | CoD Table, Prioritization Sequence | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries | Decision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | PrioritizationDeliveryEconomicsDecision | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions | DecisionTreeOptions |