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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Agile Bucket System |  Agile Ideal Days |  Agile Affinity Estimation |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | 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. | 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 effort needs to be thought of as real working time, it offers a simple common denominator for comparison. It sorts work by value, risk, and delivery ability. The result is captured as Ideal Day Estimates, Assumption Notes, and Capacity Caveats. | When many tasks need to be classified quickly, it sorts them by perceived effort and similarity. It reduces the effort of fine-grained estimation for large volumes. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | 30-90 min | 15-60 min | 30-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 3-12 | 2-9 | 3-12 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Bucketed Backlog, Relative Estimates, Split Candidates | Ideal Day Estimates, Assumption Notes, Capacity Caveats | Affinity Size Map, Grouped Estimates, Unclear Items |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | EstimationEffortAgile | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing |