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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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 | Low | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 15-45 min | 45-60 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 1-3 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |