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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Engineering Kanban |  Decision Making Constraint Analysis |  Operations Bottleneck Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 an initiative stalls, the limit often lies not in the idea but in hard or soft boundary conditions. Constraint Analysis separates these limits and shows which of them can actually be shaped. | For a flow that backs up at one point, the method looks for the capacity limit with the greatest leverage. It explains why extra effort elsewhere barely improves throughput. |
Complexitydifferent | Medium | Medium | Low | Medium |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | Ongoing | 30-90 min | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-12 | 2-8 | 3-8 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop + async | Workshop + async |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Constraint List, Hard/Soft Classification, Option Impact Notes, Decision Boundaries | Bottleneck Map, Flow Metrics, Improvement Options, Follow-up Measures |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | FlowVisual managementDelivery | ConstraintsDecisionPlanningOptions | FlowMeasurementConstraints |