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| Criterion |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable. | 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 | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-240 min | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |