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| Criterion | ![]() Engineering Kanban | ![]() Systems Thinking Evaporating Cloud | ![]() Facilitation Dot Estimation | ![]() Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | The method makes visible why two seemingly incompatible demands arise and which assumption must be tested to resolve the conflict. | When size or effort can only be estimated roughly, Dot Estimation condenses the group's experience into a quick range. It turns individual contributions into a visible selection. The result is captured as an Effort Heatmap, Risk Signals, and Discussion Targets. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | Ongoing | 60-120 min | 5-20 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 2-12 | 2-8 | 3-20 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Conflict Cloud, Assumption List, Breakthrough Ideas, Next Experiments | Effort Heatmap, Risk Signals, Discussion Targets | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Theory of ConstraintsAssumptionsSystems thinking | EstimationEffortRisk | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |



