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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Systems Thinking Evaporating Cloud |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | The method makes visible why two seemingly incompatible demands arise and which assumption must be tested to resolve the conflict. | 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 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 60-120 min | 45-90 min | 30-90 min |
Participantssame | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Conflict Cloud, Assumption List, Breakthrough Ideas, Next Experiments | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries |
Tagsno overlap | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | Theory of ConstraintsAssumptionsSystems thinking | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions |