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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Operations Fault Tree Analysis |  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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | For a critical top event with several possible triggers, the method logically models failure paths. It makes visible which combinations of conditions can lead to damage. | 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 | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 45-60 min | 2-6 h | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Fault Tree, Critical Paths, Cause Hypotheses, Control Actions | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tags1 shared | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | RiskRoot causeSafety | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |