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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Decision Tree |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 45-90 min | 30-90 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 2-8 | 1-6 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Decision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | DecisionTreeOptions | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |