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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Systems Thinking Stock and Flow Diagram |  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. | A Stock and Flow Diagram shows how stocks, inflows, and outflows shape a system over time. It is especially suited when growth, delays, or capacity limits determine the dynamics. | 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 | High | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 2-6 h | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 1-6 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Stock and Flow Model, Dynamics Notes, Simulation Hypotheses | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | DynamicsSimulationFeedbackSystems thinking | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |