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| Criterion |  Engineering Golden Path |  Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When teams need a reliable default path for frequent use, sprawl quickly emerges without any guiding logic. Golden Path bundles the preferred path so good practice becomes easy and deviation becomes deliberate. | The 5-Minute VC Check clarifies opportunities and strategic options at the earliest idea stage. It compares problem quality, customer willingness to pay, alternatives, differentiation, and market potential, and captures the result as a VC-check note, go/sharpen/park decision, and risk list. | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Tage Setup, laufend | 5-15 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 1-5 | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Golden Path Guide, Templates, Quality Checks | VC-check note, Go/sharpen/park decision, Risk and assumption list, Next validation step | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | EngineeringProductivityGovernance | StartupValidationCompetition | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |