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| Criterion |  DevOps Blameless Postmortem |  Engineering Kanban |  Operations 5 Whys |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 work sits in too many parallel streams, throughput suffers and no one sees the bottlenecks. Kanban makes the flow of work visible and limits overload so a system becomes calmer and more predictable. | For a single, hard-to-explain deviation, the method exposes the causal chain behind the visible symptom. It keeps the cause open until a controllable condition emerges instead of a mere description. | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-90 min | Ongoing | 15-30 min | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 3-12 | 2-12 | 2-6 | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Postmortem Doc, Action Items, Timeline | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list |
Tagsno overlap | Site Reliability EngineeringIncidentLearningReliability | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | LeanFlowWasteDelivery |