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| Criterion |  Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations 5 Whys |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | The 5-Minute VC Check clarifies opportunities and strategic options at the earliest idea stage. It compares problem quality, customer willingness to pay, alternatives, differentiation, and market potential, and captures the result as a VC-check note, go/sharpen/park decision, and risk list. | 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. | 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. | When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 5-15 min | 30-180 min | 15-30 min | 30-240 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-5 | 1-6 | 2-6 | 1-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | VC-check note, Go/sharpen/park decision, Risk and assumption list, Next validation step | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary |
Tagsno overlap | StartupValidationCompetition | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis |