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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Engineering Failure Scenario Analysis |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | In early initiatives with many uncertainties, planning quickly turns too optimistic. A pre-mortem makes the expected failure visible in advance and sharpens the view of causes, gaps, and countermeasures. | In critical processes, it is not enough to plan only for the normal case. Failure Scenario Analysis looks at the path into failure and shows which failures, chains, and control gaps cause the most damage. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-3 h | 1-4 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-8 | 3-8 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Failure Scenarios, Risk Notes, Control Gaps, Test and Response Actions | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | FailureResilienceRisk | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause |