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| Criterion |  Architecture Request for Comments |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | An RFC clarifies architecture context, options, and consequences. It structures technical context, alternatives, tradeoffs, open questions, and review feedback, and captures the result as an RFC document, reviewer comments, and a decision rationale. | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | 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 | Medium | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen vom Draft bis zur Entscheidung | 1-5 Tage | 45-60 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-20 Reviewer | Nutzertraffic | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | RFC document, Reviewer comments, Decision rationale, Follow-up ADR or tickets | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ArchitectureDecisionAsyncGovernance | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |