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| Criterion | ![]() Decision Making Pre-Mortem | ![]() Agile Bucket System | ![]() Decision Making Assumption Surfacing | ![]() 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. | When a large batch of work needs a fast, rough estimate, it sorts items into predefined size buckets. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as a Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, and Split Candidates. | 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 assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 30-90 min | 45-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-12 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, Split Candidates | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |



