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| Criterion |  UX Research Customer Journey Mapping |  Product Discovery User Story Mapping |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Barrier Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a user journey falls apart across many touchpoints, customer journey mapping makes the experience visible as a coherent arc. Phases, emotions, and breaks become legible enough to prioritize critical moments deliberately. | When user goals and delivery scope could drift apart, it orders the journey from goal to slice. It makes visible where an MVP can genuinely be cut. | 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 | 2-4 h | 2-4 h | 1-4 h | 2-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 4-10 | 3-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Journey Map, Pain-point List, Opportunity Backlog | Story Map, Release Slices, Backlog Candidates | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | JourneyServiceService design | BacklogJourneyPlanningMVP | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeSafetyIncident |