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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Barrier Analysis |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | 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 risk that can only be managed through multiple layers of protection, the method examines the effectiveness of each barrier. It shows where safeguards are missing, too weak, or fail under real conditions. | For a process, product, or service with noticeable failure risks, the method assesses possible failure modes in advance. It directs attention to combinations of occurrence, effect, and detectability. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 1-4 h | 2-4 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-8 | 2-6 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeSafetyIncident | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |