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| Criterion |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |  Product Discovery Test Card |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. | The Test Card turns a critical assumption into a testable claim and specifies in advance which result counts as success. | For a process, product, or service with noticeable failure risks, the method assesses possible failure modes in advance. It directs attention to combinations of occurrence, effect, and detectability. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Low | Low | High |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 45-90 min | 20-35 min | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 2-8 | 1-5 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan | Test Card with a pre-set threshold | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | Root causeQualityOperations | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery | ExperimentsValidationDiscoveryHypothesis | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |