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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  UX Research Card Sorting |  Decision Making Decision Tree |  Engineering Failure Scenario Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 content only makes sense internally and users can't find the structure again, card sorting exposes their mental order. Terms, groups, and naming are then aligned with the target group's expectations. | For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch. | In critical processes, it is not enough to plan only for the normal case. Failure Scenario Analysis looks at the path into failure and shows which failures, chains, and control gaps cause the most damage. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 20-45 min | 30-90 min | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Based on research question | 1-6 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Content groups, Label set, IA hypotheses | Decision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List | Failure Scenarios, Risk Notes, Control Gaps, Test and Response Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | Information architectureNavigationStructure | DecisionTreeOptions | FailureResilienceRisk |