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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Innovation Design Thinking |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Constraint 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. | For complex user problems with an uncertain cause, the method connects observation, interpretation, and experiment into a learning cycle. It keeps the focus on real needs and avoids premature solution language. This produces robust decisions for product and service. | 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 an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 1 Tag bis mehrere Wochen | 20–45 min | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 4-10 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Problem Statement, Prototype, Test Learnings | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | InnovationPrototypeResearch | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions |