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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Systems Thinking Evaporating Cloud |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |  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. | The method makes visible why two seemingly incompatible demands arise and which assumption must be tested to resolve the conflict. | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. | 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 | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 60-120 min | 2-6 h | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Conflict Cloud, Assumption List, Breakthrough Ideas, Next Experiments | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | Theory of ConstraintsAssumptionsSystems thinking | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |