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Selected:Trade-off AnalysisARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Assumption SurfacingDecision Matrix
| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Decision Matrix |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 several options collide with several criteria, comparison quickly becomes subjective. A Decision Matrix makes the trade-off visible and brings weighting, criteria, and options into a shared logic. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-90 min | 45-90 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 | Decision Matrix, Scoring Rationale, Selected Option |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | DecisionCriteriaScoringTradeoffs |