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| Criterion |  Product Discovery Smoke Test |  Growth A/B Testing |  Operations 5 Whys |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When demand only needs to be roughly verified, it tests interest with minimal effort. It measures whether people would take a next step at all. | When two variants compete, discussions quickly decide by taste rather than effect. A/B Testing checks behavior under controlled conditions and separates real improvement from chance or expectation effects. | 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. | 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-5 Tage | 1-4 Wochen | 15-30 min | 1-4 h |
Participantsdifferent | Nutzertraffic | 1-6 | 2-6 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Async | Async | Workshop | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Interest Metrics, Conversion Signal, Learning Note | Experiment results, Decision log, Learning summary | Root cause notes, Countermeasures | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan |
Tagsno overlap | ValidationExperimentsDemandGrowth | ExperimentsGrowthAnalyticsValidation | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident |