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| Criterion |  Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) |  Delivery Cost of Delay |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | High | High | High | Low |
Timedifferent | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 90-180 min | 2-8 h | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | 3-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | 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 | CoD Table, Prioritization Sequence | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | PrioritizationDeliveryEconomicsDecision | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations | Root causeQualityOperations |