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| Criterion |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  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. | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | 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 | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 1-4 h | 30-60 min | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-8 | 2-8 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeQualityOperations | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |