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Criterion
Paper illustration for Contextual Inquiry.
UX Research
Contextual Inquiry
Paper illustration for Affinity Estimation.
Agile
Affinity Estimation
Anonymous individual judgments pass through feedback loops to form a distribution.
Decision Making
Delphi Method
Paper illustration for Wideband Delphi.
Decision Making
Wideband Delphi
Purposedifferent
When work processes are known only from accounts and the real context stays hidden, Contextual Inquiry makes behavior at the workplace visible. Observation and follow-up questions together show how people actually work, get interrupted, and improvise.When many tasks need to be classified quickly, it sorts them by perceived effort and similarity. It reduces the effort of fine-grained estimation for large volumes.When knowledge is distributed and direct dominance should be avoided, groups quickly fall under the sway of their opinion leaders. The Delphi Method gathers assessments iteratively and gradually brings expert judgments closer together.A single opinion rarely holds up for planning when the future is genuinely uncertain. It separates options, evaluation criteria, and open risks. The result is captured as an Estimate Range, Assumption Log, and Expert Consensus Notes.
Complexitydifferent
MediumMediumHighHigh
Timedifferent
1-3 Wochen30-90 min1-4 Wochen1-4 h or multiple rounds
Participantsdifferent
4-12 Beobachtungen3-126-30 Experten4-12 Experten
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshopAsyncWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain PointsAffinity Size Map, Grouped Estimates, Unclear ItemsExpert Forecast, Consensus Range, Assumption NotesEstimate Range, Assumption Log, Expert Consensus Notes
Tagsno overlap
UX researchObservationContext
EstimationBacklogRelative sizing
ForecastingExpertsDecisionStrategy
EstimationExpertsForecasting
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