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| Criterion | ![]() Decision Making Trade-off Analysis | ![]() Architecture Views and Beyond | ![]() Architecture Request for Comments | ![]() Architecture Architecture Decision Record |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | Views and Beyond organizes architecture into several views so no single diagram has to do everything at once. This makes it possible to choose the representation that fits the stakeholder's question. | 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. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 1-3 Tage | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 15-45 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1-4 | 3-20 Reviewer | 1-3 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Architecture Views, Cross-view Notes, Rationale | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | DocumentationStakeholdersArchitecture | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance |



