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| Criterion |  Product Discovery User Story Mapping |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When user goals and delivery scope could drift apart, it orders the journey from goal to slice. It makes visible where an MVP can genuinely be cut. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 2-4 h | 30-90 min | 20–45 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Story Map, Release Slices, Backlog Candidates | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | BacklogJourneyPlanningMVP | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |