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| Criterion |  UX Research Diary Study |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Engineering Kanban |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When experiences build up over days or weeks and a single session cannot capture them, Diary Study records the course of everyday life. Recurring triggers, moods, and habits become visible this way, beyond the sharpness of memory. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-4 Wochen | 1-3 h | Ongoing | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 5-20 | 4-10 | 2-12 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Diary Entries, Longitudinal Patterns, Experience Timeline | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | UX researchTrackingBehavior | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |