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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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 an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-4 h | 2-6 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-8 | 3-10 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |