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| Criterion |  DevOps Blameless Postmortem |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Barrier Analysis |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | For a risk that can only be managed through multiple layers of protection, the method examines the effectiveness of each barrier. It shows where safeguards are missing, too weak, or fail under real conditions. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-90 min | 1-4 h | 2-4 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-12 | 3-8 | 2-6 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Postmortem Doc, Action Items, Timeline | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tags1 shared | Site Reliability EngineeringIncidentLearningReliability | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeSafetyIncident | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |