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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 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 | Low | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 15-45 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 1-3 | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |