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Selected:Assumption Surfacing Root Cause Analysis Causal Factor Analysis Failure Mode and Effects Analysis

Criterion	Decision Making Assumption Surfacing	Operations Root Cause Analysis	Operations Causal Factor 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 an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events.	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	High	High
Timedifferent	45-90 min	1-4 h	2-6 h	2-6 h
Participantsdifferent	2-8	3-8	3-10	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	Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions	FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions
Tagsno overlap	AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery	Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident	CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline	RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause

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