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| Criterion |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Engineering Failure Scenario Analysis |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | In critical processes, it is not enough to plan only for the normal case. Failure Scenario Analysis looks at the path into failure and shows which failures, chains, and control gaps cause the most damage. | 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 | 30-180 min | 1-3 h | 20–45 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | 3-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Failure Scenarios, Risk Notes, Control Gaps, Test and Response Actions | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | FailureResilienceRisk | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |