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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |  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. | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. | 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 | 2-6 h | 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 | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |