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| Criterion |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Operations Failure Mode and Effects Analysis |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations Kepner-Tregoe |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When improvement options need to be sorted more finely than just start and stop, it brings observations into clear kinds of action. This makes visible what should be done more, less, newly, or continued. | 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 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 disturbance that's hard to pin down, the method cleanly separates problem, cause, and decision. It reduces mixing when symptoms allow several interpretations. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | High | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 2-6 h | 1-4 h | 2-8 h |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 | 3-10 | 3-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | FMEA Table, Risk Priority, Mitigation Actions | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Problem Analysis, Decision Analysis, Risk Plan |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | RiskQualityOperationsRoot cause | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Problem solvingRoot causeDecisionOperations |