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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Agile Bucket System |  Agile Ideal Days |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 a large batch of work needs a fast, rough estimate, it sorts items into predefined size buckets. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as a Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, and Split Candidates. | When effort needs to be thought of as real working time, it offers a simple common denominator for comparison. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as Ideal Day Estimates, Assumption Notes, and Capacity Caveats. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 30-90 min | 15-60 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-12 | 2-9 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, Split Candidates | Ideal Day Estimates, Assumption Notes, Capacity Caveats | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | EstimationEffortAgile | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |