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| Criterion |  DevOps Blameless Postmortem |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Operations Root Cause Tree Analysis |  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. | 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 problem with several suspected causes, the method builds a causal structure instead of a mere list. It makes visible how causes connect and where the strongest points of leverage lie. | 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 | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-90 min | 30-60 min | 1-3 h | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 3-12 | 2-8 | 2-8 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Postmortem Doc, Action Items, Timeline | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Cause Tree, Evidence Notes, Countermeasures | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | Site Reliability EngineeringIncidentLearningReliability | Root causeQualityOperations | Root causeTreeIncidentQuality | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |