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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | For a process, product, or service with noticeable failure risks, the method assesses possible failure modes in advance. It directs attention to combinations of occurrence, effect, and detectability. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 45-60 min | 30-60 min | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | Root causeQualityOperations | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |