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| Criterion | ![]() Decision Making Trade-off Analysis | ![]() Architecture Request for Comments | ![]() Product Discovery Assumption Mapping | ![]() 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. | 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 assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 45-60 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-20 Reviewer | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Decision Matrix, Scoring Rationale, Selected Option |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | DecisionCriteriaScoringTradeoffs |



