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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Engineering Kanban |  Product Discovery Assumption Mapping |  Decision Making Assumption Surfacing |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 work sits in too many parallel streams, throughput suffers and no one sees the bottlenecks. Kanban makes the flow of work visible and limits overload so a system becomes calmer and more predictable. | When assumptions still sit unordered in the room, it weighs uncertainty against leverage. It makes visible which hypotheses should be checked first. | Plans often contain assumptions that were never openly stated and remain dangerous precisely because of that. Assumption Surfacing makes these silent premises visible and prioritizes which of them carry the initiative or could sink it. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | Ongoing | 45-60 min | 45-90 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-12 | 2-8 | 2-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Assumption map, Test backlog, Risk ranking | Assumption List, Critical Assumptions, Learning Plan |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | FlowVisual managementDelivery | AssumptionsRiskExperimentsValidation | AssumptionsRiskDecisionDiscovery |