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| Criterion |  Agile Sprint Retrospective |  Operations After-Action Review |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a sprint is over and friction shouldn't simply be carried forward, it opens the view onto collaboration and patterns. It creates space to see causes and changes together. | After missions or project phases with unclear outcomes, the method makes visible what actually happened and what can be learned from it. It separates course, effect, and causes so experience turns into solid improvement. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. |
Complexitysame | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | Up to 3 hours for a one-month Sprint; shorter Sprints are usually shorter | 20-45 min | 15-45 min |
Participantsdifferent | Scrum Team | 3-12 | 1-3 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Improvement actions, Team agreements | Lessons learned, Action items, Event summary | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveImprovementLearning | LearningOperationsImprovement | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
