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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Decision Making Argument Mapping |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | When statements, evidence, and counterarguments get mixed up, a debate quickly loses its structure. Argument Mapping breaks a thesis down into its reasoning and makes visible what it really rests on. | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 1-3 h | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1-8 | 3-20 Reviewer | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Argument Map, Evidence Gaps, Decision Rationale | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries |
Tags1 shared | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | SensemakingDecisionRationale | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions |