View methods side by side.
Choose up to four methods. Add them using the search and share the comparison by copying its link.
Selected:Trade-off AnalysisARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Assumption SurfacingAssumption Mapping
| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |