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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |  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. | In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected. | When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable. | 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 | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 30-180 min | 30-240 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1-6 | 1-6 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |