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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Architecture C4 Model |
|---|---|---|---|
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. | The C4 Model makes a system legible across several resolution levels, from context down to code. It suits situations where different audiences need to understand the same architecture from different altitudes. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-20 Reviewer | 1-5 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Context Diagram, Container Diagram, Component Diagram |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ArchitectureCommunicationVisualization |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
