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| Criterion | ![]() Decision Making Cynefin Workshop | ![]() Product Discovery Assumption Mapping | ![]() Decision Making Pre-Mortem | ![]() Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When problems are unclear, chaotic, or only seemingly familiar, standard recipes fall short. A Cynefin Workshop sorts situations by the nature of their problem and connects them with matching action logic. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 60-180 min | 45-60 min | 20–45 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-20 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Cynefin Map, Domain-specific Actions, Sensemaking Notes | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ComplexitySensemakingDecision | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |



