Architects have no “best practices” in software architectural design–everything is a trade-off. But how do you figure out what those trade-offs are? The answer to every question in software architecture is “It depends.” This session starts to answer the follow up question: “Depends on what?!?” It proves a variety of techniques and tools to help architects and other teams members understand and evaluate trade-offs, including how to perform iterative design and how to avoid common trade-off traps. As a contrast with the bureaucratic and meeting-heavy ancient approaches to trade-off analysis, this session highlights five modern techniques architects can use to analyze trade-offs.