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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | When an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped. | 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 | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 45-60 min | 30-90 min | 45-90 min |
Participantssame | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |