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| Criterion |  UX Research Contextual Inquiry |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Decision Making Decision Tree |  Engineering Failure Scenario Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | For decisions with follow-on paths and dependencies, a linear comparison is often not enough. A Decision Tree shows how options branch under conditions and which consequences hang on each branch. | In critical processes, it is not enough to plan only for the normal case. Failure Scenario Analysis looks at the path into failure and shows which failures, chains, and control gaps cause the most damage. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 Wochen | 20–45 min | 30-90 min | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 Beobachtungen | Small cross-functional group | 1-6 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Field Notes, Workflow Insights, Pain Points | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Decision Tree, Option Map, Assumption List | Failure Scenarios, Risk Notes, Control Gaps, Test and Response Actions |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchObservationContext | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | DecisionTreeOptions | FailureResilienceRisk |