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| Criterion |  Agile Starfish Retrospective |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|
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. | 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 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | 1-4 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-12 | 3-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Starfish Board, Practice Changes, Experiments | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | RetrospectiveImprovementExperimentsTeam | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |
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Methods with strong topical overlap with the current selection, not yet in the comparison.
