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| Criterion |  Agile Story Splitting |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Operations Barrier Analysis |  Operations Causal Factor Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When a story becomes too large for a clean flow, it breaks scope down along value and risk. It shapes the work into a form that ships earlier and is easier to verify. | When delivery work dissolves into wait times, handoffs, and hidden effort, Value Stream Mapping makes the actual flow visible. The method exposes bottlenecks, idle time, and feedback loops so lead time and improvement levers become tangible. | For a risk that can only be managed through multiple layers of protection, the method examines the effectiveness of each barrier. It shows where safeguards are missing, too weak, or fail under real conditions. | For an event with a complicated course, the method breaks down the contributing factors along the timeline. It shows how conditions, decisions, and reactions together produce a course of events. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | High |
Timedifferent | 30-60 min | 1-3 h | 2-4 h | 2-6 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-6 | 4-10 | 2-6 | 3-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Smaller Stories, Acceptance Criteria, Split Rationale | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Barrier Inventory, Failure Analysis per Barrier, Action Backlog | Event Timeline, Causal Factor Chart, Cause List, Corrective Actions |
Tagsno overlap | BacklogIterationDelivery | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | Root causeSafetyIncident | CausalityIncidentRoot causeTimeline |