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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Delivery Cost of Delay |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  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. | Helps clarify scope, order, and delivery flow in concrete terms. It makes work, constraints, and sequence manageable. The result is captured as a Cost of Delay table and prioritization sequence. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 90-180 min | 20–45 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | CoD Table, Prioritization Sequence | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | PrioritizationDeliveryEconomicsDecision | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |