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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Request for Comments |  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 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. | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 20–45 min | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 3-20 Reviewer | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |