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| Criterion |  Engineering Kanban |  Operations 5 Whys |  Decision Making Trade-off Analysis |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When work sits in too many parallel streams, throughput suffers and no one sees the bottlenecks. Kanban makes the flow of work visible and limits overload so a system becomes calmer and more predictable. | 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. | With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects. | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Low | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | Ongoing | 15-30 min | 45-120 min | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-12 | 2-6 | 2-8 | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Trade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted Downsides | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list |
Tagsno overlap | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions | LeanFlowWasteDelivery |