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| Criterion |  DevOps Blameless Postmortem |  Architecture Architecture Decision Record |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | After an incident with damage or a near miss, the method creates a sober field for learning without assigning blame. It directs attention to the course of events, conditions, and effective countermeasures. | An ADR permanently records an architecture decision with context, trade-offs, and consequence. It creates continuity for later changes because the decision path stays traceable. | 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. | 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 | Medium | Low | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-90 min | 15-45 min | 30-60 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 3-12 | 1-3 | 2-8 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Postmortem Doc, Action Items, Timeline | ADR File, Decision Log, Rationale | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | Site Reliability EngineeringIncidentLearningReliability | ArchitectureRationaleDocumentationGovernance | Root causeQualityOperations | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |