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| Criterion |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. | 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. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | High | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 2-6 h | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |