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| Criterion |  Architecture SAAM (Software Architecture Analysis Method) |  Product Strategy ICE Scoring |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Operations Change 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. | When ideas need sorting quickly, it condenses impact, confidence, and effort into one compact score. It connects customer value, product logic, and decision priorities. The result is captured as an ICE table and top-ideas list. | 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. | For a deviation after a change, the method isolates the influence of the altered condition. It narrows down which differences are relevant and which are just accompanying noise. |
Complexitydifferent | High | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | Preparation, scenario analysis, and findings review; effort depends on scope | 30-60 min | 45-120 min | 45-120 min |
Participantsdifferent | Architecture experts and stakeholders for scenarios and weighting | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-6 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | 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 | ICE Table, Top Idea List | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Change Matrix, Cause Hypotheses, Validation Questions, Action List |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureChangeAnalysisComparisonQuality | PrioritizationScoringGrowthDecision | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ChangeRoot causeTroubleshootingComparison |