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| Criterion |  Operations 5 Whys |  Agile Sailboat Retrospective |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | For a single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description. | When a team wants to read momentum, brakes, and risks together, it offers an easily understandable picture of the situation. It makes drive, obstacles, and headwind visible in the same picture. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 15-30 min | 45-90 min | 45-90 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-6 | 4-12 | 4-12 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Sailboat Board, Risks, Improvement Actions | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | RetrospectiveTeamImprovement | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |