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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Architecture ATAM (Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method) |  Product Discovery Test Card |  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. | ATAM helps teams weigh architecture decisions when quality goals compete. The team considers business goals, stakeholder expectations, and technical decisions together. The evaluation shows which risks need further investigation. | The Test Card turns a critical assumption into a testable claim and specifies in advance which result counts as success. | 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 | High | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | Several meetings plus preparation and analysis; total effort depends on scope | 20-35 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Evaluation team, architects, and relevant stakeholders | 1-5 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Prioritized quality scenarios in a utility tree, Architecture risks with reasoning and assumptions, Sensitivity and trade-off points, Findings report with open investigations | Test Card with a pre-set threshold | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ArchitectureQualityRiskTradeoffsStakeholders | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryHypothesis | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |