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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Decision Making Risk Matrix |  Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs) |  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. | When a project faces many possible disruptions, it quickly becomes unclear which risks deserve attention first. It separates options, evaluation criteria, and open risks. The result is captured as a Risk Matrix and a Top Risk List. | 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. | 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 | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 30-60 min | 2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-10 | Designers, developers as users, and facilitation | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Risk Matrix, Top Risk List | Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions | Decision Matrix, Scoring Rationale, Selected Option |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | RiskDecisionPrioritizationAssessment | ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks | DecisionCriteriaScoringTradeoffs |