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| Criterion |  Decision Making Argument Mapping |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When statements, evidence, and counterarguments get mixed up, a debate quickly loses its structure. Argument Mapping breaks a thesis down into its reasoning and makes visible what it really rests on. | In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected. | 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. | For a disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | 30-180 min | 1-4 h | 2-8 h |
Participantsdifferent | 1-8 | 1-6 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Argument Map, Evidence Gaps, Decision Rationale | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan |
Tagsno overlap | SensemakingDecisionRationale | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations |