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| Criterion |  Agile Three Amigos |  Agile Bucket System |  Operations Root Cause Analysis |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When story, test, and implementation could drift apart, it brings business perspective, engineering, and quality together early. It prevents a story from being read differently only late in the process. | When a large batch of work needs a fast, rough estimate, it sorts items into predefined size buckets. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as a Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, and Split Candidates. | 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 | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 15-30 min | 30-90 min | 1-4 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3 | 3-12 | 3-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Clarified Story, Test Examples, Open Questions | Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, Split Candidates | Problem Statement, Cause Hypotheses, Confirmed Causes, Action Plan | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | CollaborationBehavior-Driven DevelopmentQualityRefinement | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | Root causeProblem solvingQualityIncident | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |