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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. | 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. | 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. | 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 | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | 45-90 min | 20–45 min | 45-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-8 | Small cross-functional group | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation |