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Selected:Current Reality Tree ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)5 Whys Causal Factor Analysis

Criterion	Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree	Architecture ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)	Operations 5 Whys	Operations Causal Factor Analysis
Purposedifferent	A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once.	ARID examines how well developers can work with a technical design. It focuses on a part of the system that can still be revised, between the architecture overview and the detailed specification.	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.	For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events.
Complexitydifferent	High	Medium	Low	High
Timedifferent	2-6 h	2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional	15-30 min	2-6 h
Participantsdifferent	3-8	Designers, developers as users, and facilitation	2-6	3-10
Formatdifferent	Workshop	Workshop + async	Workshop	Workshop + async
Outputdifferent	Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas	Prioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisions	Root cause notes, Countermeasures	Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions
Tagsno overlap	Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality	ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks	Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving	CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline

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