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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Engineering Failure Scenario Analysis |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  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. | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | 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 | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-3 h | 45-120 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Failure Scenarios, Risk Notes, Control Gaps, Test and Response Actions | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | FailureResilienceRisk | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |