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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Product Discovery Experiment Canvas |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | When experiments become unreadable after the fact, it arranges hypothesis, signal, and learning goal on a single canvas. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence. The result is captured as a Completed Experiment Canvas and a Success Metric. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 15-45 min | 45-60 min | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1-3 | 2-8 | 1-5 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Completed Experiment Canvas, Success Metric |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryHypothesis |