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Selected:Trade-off AnalysisARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)Assumption SurfacingMVP Test Matrix
| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery MVP Test 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 minimal variants compete to answer the same question, it makes comparing and choosing between them cleaner. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence. The result is captured as a Test Matrix and a Test Plan. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-90 min | 45-75 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
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 | Test Matrix, Test Plan |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryOptions |