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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Riskiest Assumption Test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | 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 an idea hinges on one critical unknown, it prioritizes testing that exact piece of uncertainty first. It separates problem, assumption, solution, and evidence. The result is captured as a prioritized list of assumptions, a test plan, and a result report. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-5 Tage | 45-90 min | 1-2 Wochen pro Iteration |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Prioritized Assumption List, Test Plan, Results Report |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryAssumptions |