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| Criterion |  Decision Making Pre-Mortem |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 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 problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 20–45 min | 1-4 h | 2-6 h | 30-60 min |
Participantsdifferent | Small cross-functional group | 3-8 | 3-10 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Risk list, Mitigation plan, Assumption log | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog |
Tagsno overlap | RiskDecisionFailurePlanning | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause | Root causeQualityOperations |