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| Criterion |  Engineering Hypothesis-Driven Troubleshooting |  DevOps Incident Command |  Engineering Fault Isolation |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | During an acute incident with several people involved, the method creates a clear leadership and communication structure. It reduces chaos when fast coordination and clean situational awareness are both needed at once. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-240 min | As needed | 30-180 min | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 1-6 | 4-15 | 1-6 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Hypothesis Log, Test Plan, Evidence Notes, Diagnosis Summary | Incident Log, Action Tracker, Stakeholder Updates | Fault Isolation Map, Test Log, Excluded Hypotheses, Narrowed Fault Area | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | TroubleshootingProblem solvingDiagnosis | IncidentOperationsReliability | TroubleshootingDiagnosisEngineering | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |