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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Operations Fault Tree Analysis |  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. | For a critical top event with several possible triggers, the method logically models failure paths. It makes visible which combinations of conditions can lead to damage. | 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 | High | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 2-6 h | 2-6 h | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-8 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Fault Tree, Critical Paths, Cause Hypotheses, Control Actions | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | RiskRoot causeSafety | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |