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| Criterion |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  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. | 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. | 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 | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 20–45 min | 45-90 min | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries |
Tags1 shared | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions |