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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Risk Matrix |  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. | When a project faces many possible disruptions, it quickly becomes unclear which risks deserve attention first. It separates options, evaluation criteria, and open risks. The result is captured as a Risk Matrix and a Top Risk List. | 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 | 30-60 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 3-10 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk Matrix, Top Risk List | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tags1 shared | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionPrioritizationAssessment | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |