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| Criterion |  Agile Sprint Retrospective |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Root Cause Tree Analysis |  Agile 4Ls Retrospective |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a sprint is over and friction shouldn't simply be carried forward, it opens the view onto collaboration and patterns. It creates space to see causes and changes together. | 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 problem with several suspected causes, the method builds a causal structure instead of a mere list. It makes visible how causes connect and where the strongest points of leverage lie. | When a sprint should not only be assessed but also learned from, it captures experience in clear learning categories. It records what worked, what's missing, and what should run differently next time. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | Up to 3 hours for a one-month Sprint; shorter Sprints are usually shorter | 1-4 h | 1-3 h | 45–75 min |
Participantsdifferent | Scrum Team | 3-8 | 2-8 | Team members involved |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Improvement actions, Team agreements | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Cause Tree, Evidence Notes, Countermeasures | 4Ls Board, Learning Themes, Improvement Actions |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveImprovementLearning | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeTreeIncidentQuality | RetrospectiveLearningReflectionTeam |