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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  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. | 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. | 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 | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 45-60 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |