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| Criterion |  Agile Mad Sad Glad |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |  Agile 4Ls Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a team's or workshop's mood needs to become readable, it structures emotional signals with little setup. It makes strain, relief, and sources of energy tangible. | 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 process, product, or service with noticeable failure risks, the method assesses possible failure modes in advance. It directs attention to combinations of occurrence, effect, and detectability. | When a sprint should not only be assessed but also learned from, it captures experience in clear learning categories. It records what worked, what's missing, and what should run differently next time. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 1-4 h | 2-6 h | 45–75 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 3-8 | 3-10 | Team members involved |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Emotion Board, Themes, Action Items | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions | 4Ls Board, Learning Themes, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveTeamReflection | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause | RetrospectiveLearningReflectionTeam |