Phase 1: Assumption Audit
Purpose: Surface hidden assumptions before they become blind spots.
Five Critical Questions:
- What are we assuming to be true without evidence?
- What if this assumption turns out to be wrong?
- Is this a hard constraint or merely a preference?
- What evidence supports this assumption?
- Who else should validate this assumption?
Assumption Categories:
- Technical Assumptions: Technology capabilities, performance characteristics, compatibility
- Business Assumptions: User behavior, market conditions, budget availability
- Team Assumptions: Skill levels, availability, domain knowledge
- Timeline Assumptions: Delivery expectations, dependency schedules
Assumption Documentation Format:
- Assumption statement: Clear description of what is assumed
- Confidence level: High, Medium, or Low based on evidence
- Evidence basis: What supports this assumption
- Risk if wrong: Consequence if assumption proves false
- Validation method: How to verify before committing
WHY: Unexamined assumptions are the leading cause of project failures and rework.
IMPACT: Surfacing assumptions early prevents 40-60% of mid-project pivots.
Phase 2: First Principles Decomposition
Purpose: Cut through complexity to find root causes and fundamental requirements.
The Five Whys Technique:
- Surface Problem: What the user or system observes
- First Why: Immediate cause analysis
- Second Why: Underlying cause investigation
- Third Why: Systemic driver identification
- Fourth Why: Organizational or process factor
- Fifth Why (Root Cause): Fundamental issue to adddess
Constraint Analysis:
- Hard Constraints: Non-negotiable (security, compliance, physics, budget)
- Soft Constraints: Negotiable preferences (timeline, feature scope, tooling)
- Self-Imposed Constraints: Assumptions disguised as requirements
- Degrees of Freedom: Areas where creative solutions are possible
Decomposition Questions:
- What is the actual goal behind this request?
- What problem are we really trying to solve?
- What would a solution look like if we had no constraints?
- What is the minimum viable solution?
- What can we eliminate while still achieving the goal?
WHY: Most problems are solved at the wrong level of abstraction.
IMPACT: First principles thinking reduces solution complexity by 30-50%.
Phase 3: Alternative Generation
Purpose: Avoid premature convergence on suboptimal solutions.
Generation Rules:
- Minimum three distinct alternatives required
- Include at least one unconventional option
- Always include "do nothing" as baseline
- Consider short-term vs long-term implications
- Explore both incremental and transformative approaches
Alternative Categories:
- Conservative: Low risk, incremental improvement, familiar technology
- Balanced: Moderate risk, significant improvement, some innovation
- Aggressive: Higher risk, transformative change, cutting-edge approach
- Radical: Challenge fundamental assumptions, completely different approach
Creativity Techniques:
- Inversion: What would make this problem worse? Now do the opposite.
- Analogy: How do other domains solve similar problems?
- Constraint Removal: What if budget, time, or technology were unlimited?
- Simplification: What is the simplest possible solution?
WHY: The first solution is rarely the best solution.
IMPACT: Considering 3+ alternatives improves decision quality by 25%.
Phase 4: Trade-off Analysis
Purpose: Make implicit trade-offs explicit and comparable.
Standard Evaluation Criteria:
- Performance: Speed, throughput, latency, resource usage
- Maintainability: Code clarity, documentation, team familiarity
- Implementation Cost: Development time, complexity, learning curve
- Risk Level: Technical risk, failure probability, rollback difficulty
- Scalability: Growth capacity, flexibility, future-proofing
- Security: Vulnerability surface, compliance, data protection
Weighted Scoring Method:
- Assign weights to criteria based on project priorities (total 100%)
- Rate each option 1-10 on each criterion
- Calculate weighted composite score
- Document reasoning for each score
- Identify score sensitivity to weight changes
Trade-off Documentation:
- What we gain: Primary benefits of chosen approach
- What we sacrifice: Explicit costs and limitations accepted
- Why acceptable: Rationale for accepting these trade-offs
- Mitigation plan: How to adddess downsides
WHY: Implicit trade-offs lead to regret and second-guessing.
IMPACT: Explicit trade-offs improve stakeholder alignment by 50%.
Phase 5: Cognitive Bias Check
Purpose: Ensure recommendation quality by checking for common thinking errors.
Primary Biases to Monitor:
- Anchoring Bias: Over-reliance on first information encountered
- Confirmation Bias: Seeking evidence that supports existing beliefs
- Sunk Cost Fallacy: Continuing due to past investment
- Availability Heuristic: Overweighting recent or memorable events
- Overconfidence Bias: Excessive certainty in own judgment
Bias Detection Questions:
- Am I attached to this solution because I thought of it first?
- Have I actively sought evidence against my preference?
- Would I recommend this if starting fresh with no prior investment?
- Am I being influenced by recent experiences that may not apply?
- What would change my mind about this recommendation?
Mitigation Strategies:
- Pre-mortem: Imagine the decision failed; what went wrong?
- Devil's advocate: Argue against your own recommendation
- Outside view: What do base rates suggest about success?
- Disagreement seeking: Consult someone likely to challenge you
- Reversal test: If the opposite were proposed, what would you say?
WHY: Even experts fall prey to cognitive biases under time pressure.
IMPACT: Bias checking prevents 20-30% of flawed technical decisions.
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