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Criterion
Paper illustration for Fault Isolation.
Engineering
Fault Isolation
Design sheets and interface cards connect to jointly written pseudocode with highlighted unresolved questions.
Architecture
ARID (Active Reviews for Intermediate Designs)
Paper illustration for Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting.
Engineering
Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting
A 5 Whys working surface connects an observable problem with evidenced causes, marked uncertainty and concrete countermeasures with ownership.
Operations
5 Whys
Purposedifferent
In technical failures, the visible symptom often gets mixed up with the actual cause. Fault Isolation narrows the fault space and progressively reduces which part of the system is truly affected.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.When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable.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
MediumMediumMediumLow
Timedifferent
30-180 min2–4 h review as a planning range; preparation and evaluation additional30-240 min15-30 min
Participantsdifferent
1-6Designers, developers as users, and facilitation1-62-6
Formatdifferent
Workshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop + asyncWorkshop
Outputdifferent
Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault AreaPrioritized development tasks, Jointly produced code or pseudocode, Observed difficulties and open design questions, Proposed design revisionsHypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis SummaryRoot cause notes, Countermeasures
Tagsno overlap
TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering
ArchitectureEngineeringFeedbackValidationTasks
TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis
Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving
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