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| Criterion |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Barrier Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When systems fail unexpectedly, spontaneous attempts often produce more noise than insight. Hypothesis-driven Troubleshooting translates symptoms into testable assumptions and makes troubleshooting learnable. | 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 risk that can only be managed through multiple layers of protection, the method examines the effectiveness of each barrier. It shows where safeguards are missing, too weak, or fail under real conditions. |
Complexitysame | Medium | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 30-240 min | 30-180 min | 1-4 h | 2-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | 1-6 | 3-8 | 2-6 |
Formatsame | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeSafetyIncident |