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| Criterion |  Systems Thinking Stock and Flow Diagram |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | A Stock and Flow Diagram shows how stocks, inflows, and outflows shape a system over time. It is especially suited when growth, delays, or capacity limits determine the dynamics. | 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 assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | High | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2-6 h | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Stock and Flow Model, Dynamics Notes, Simulation Hypotheses | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | DynamicsSimulationFeedbackSystems thinking | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |
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