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Criterion
Rich Picture workspace showing the question, observations, and next decision.
Systems Thinking
Rich Picture
Paper illustration for Trade-off Analysis.
Decision Making
Trade-off Analysis
Paper illustration for Current Reality Tree
Systems Thinking
Current Reality Tree
Paper illustration for Constraint Analysis.
Decision Making
Constraint Analysis
Purposedifferent
A Rich Picture brings an unclear situation onto a shared drawing. It captures actors, tensions, information flows, and blind spots before the team jumps to solutions too early.With limited resources, quality, speed, cost, and risk almost always compete with each other. Trade-off Analysis makes these tensions explicit and prevents decisions from producing hidden side effects.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.When an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped.
Complexitydifferent
LowMediumHighLow
Timedifferent
30-90 min45-120 min2-6 h30-90 min
Participantsdifferent
2-102-83-82-8
Formatdifferent
WorkshopWorkshop + asyncWorkshopWorkshop + async
Outputdifferent
Rich Picture, Problem Framing NotesTrade-off Matrix, Criteria List, Decision Rationale, Accepted DownsidesCurrent Reality Tree, Core Problems, Intervention IdeasConstraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries
Tagsno overlap
Systems thinkingSoft systemsFramingVisualization
TradeoffsDecisionCriteriaOptions
Systems thinkingRoot causeConstraintsCausality
ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions
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