Trade-off Analysis Methods
ATAM, scenarios, and naming the points where qualities conflict.
3 to work through
-
intermediate
A team must choose between three designs with different strengths. What analysis method produces a decision rather than a discussion?
2 min answer -
intermediate
An organisation needs a repeatable method for evaluating architectural trade-offs. What should the method contain, and what makes such methods fail?
2 min answer -
intermediate
How do you decide how much analysis an architectural decision deserves?
2 min answer
4 terms in this topic
Scenario-Based Comparison
Comparing design options against specific described situations rather than against abstract qualities - which forces vague terms to be cashed out and…
practiceSensitivity Analysis
Identifying which assumption, if wrong, would change the decision - which tells you what to measure early and what to design to change cheaply.
practiceTrade-off Analysis Methods
Structured ways to compare architectural options — valuable for making reasoning explicit, dangerous when they produce false precision.
practiceWeighted Decision Matrix
A scoring method that rates options against weighted criteria, used to expose disagreement about priorities rather than to produce an answer.
Neighbouring topics
Architecture Decision-Making
General material on making and recording architectural decisions.
Architecture Decision Records
One decision, its context, alternatives and consequences, kept immutable.
Reversibility
One-way and two-way doors, and buying optionality deliberately.
Build vs Buy
Differentiation, five-year TCO, and the exit cost of each option.
Monolith vs Microservices
A team-topology decision far more often than a technology one.
SQL vs NoSQL
Decided by access patterns and query flexibility, not by data volume.
Sync vs Async
Whether the caller's outcome depends on the callee's response.
Strong vs Eventual Consistency
A per-operation decision, resolved by what a stale read would cost.
Managed vs Self-Managed
Trading control and unit cost against operational attention.
Serverless vs Containers
Spiky and event-driven versus sustained throughput.
Single vs Multi-Region
Driven by RTO, RPO and residency rather than by ambition.
Centralised vs Distributed
Shared platform leverage against team autonomy.
Performance vs Cost
Buying latency, and knowing what the last millisecond is worth.
Reliability vs Complexity
Mechanisms that add availability and add failure modes.
Security vs Usability
Varying control by the value of the action rather than uniformly.
Delivery vs Maintainability
Fast in the cheap places, careful in the expensive ones.
Deciding Under Uncertainty
Bounding the downside and buying information cheaply.
Technology Selection
Evaluating options against drivers rather than against enthusiasm.
Decision Practice
Thresholds, review, supersession and keeping the log alive.