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| Criterion |  Systems Thinking Evaporating Cloud |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Agile Bucket System |  Agile Affinity Estimation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | The method makes visible why two seemingly incompatible demands arise and which assumption must be tested to resolve the conflict. | 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 a large batch of work needs a fast, rough estimate, it sorts items into predefined size buckets. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as a Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, and Split Candidates. | When many tasks need to be classified quickly, it sorts them by perceived effort and similarity. It reduces the effort of fine-grained estimation for large volumes. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 60-120 min | 45-90 min | 30-90 min | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 2-8 | 3-12 | 3-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Conflict Cloud, Assumption List, Breakthrough Ideas, Next Experiments | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, Split Candidates | Affinity Size Map, Grouped Estimates, Unclear Items |
Tagsno overlap | Theory of ConstraintsAssumptionsSystems thinking | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing |