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| Criterion |  Business Strategy 5-Minuten VC-Check |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | When a problem keeps recurring and the cause stays unclear, the method exposes the underlying mechanism. It separates symptom, guess, and robust explanation from one another. | 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 | Low | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 5-15 min | 30-180 min | 1-4 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-5 | 1-6 | 3-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
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 | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | StartupValidationCompetition | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |