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| Criterion | ![]() Systems Thinking Futures Wheel | ![]() Agile Sailboat Retrospective | ![]() Operations After-Action Review | ![]() Agile Starfish Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | The Futures Wheel helps explore the consequences of a decision, a trend, or a strategic move in a structured way. It makes visible which first, second, and third-order effects could arise from an event. | When a team wants to read momentum, brakes, and risks together, it offers an easily understandable picture of the situation. It makes drive, obstacles, and headwind visible in the same picture. | After missions or project phases with unclear outcomes, the method makes visible what actually happened and what can be learned from it. It separates course, effect, and causes so experience turns into solid improvement. | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 60-120 min | 45-90 min | 20-45 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 4-12 | 3-12 | 4-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Futures Wheel, Consequence Chains, Strategic Signals | Sailboat Board, Risks, Improvement Actions | Lessons learned, Action items, Event summary | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments |
Tagsno overlap | ForesightSystems thinkingSignals | RetrospectiveTeamImprovement | LearningOperationsImprovement | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam |



