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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Operations ALPEN Method |  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. | 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. | With an overloaded day full of too many tasks, a realistic picture of the day emerges. The method connects estimating, deciding, and buffer thinking so planning fits available energy and time. | 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 | 45-90 min | 10-20 min daily | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 1 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Daily Plan, Time Estimates, Review Notes | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | PlanningTime managementProductivityOperations | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |