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| Criterion |  Engineering Kanban |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Systems Thinking Current Reality Tree |  Operations Bottleneck Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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. | A Current Reality Tree condenses many symptoms into a few causal chains. The method makes visible which core problems drive several negative effects at once. | For a flow that backs up at one point, the method looks for the capacity limit with the greatest leverage. It explains why extra effort elsewhere barely improves throughput. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | High | Medium |
Timedifferent | Ongoing | 1-3 h | 2-6 h | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-12 | 4-10 | 3-8 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Current Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention Ideas | Bottleneck Map, Flow Metrics, Improvement Options, Follow-up Measures |
Tagsno overlap | FlowVisual managementDelivery | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality | FlowMeasurementConstraints |