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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Engineering Kanban |  Operations Fishbone Diagram |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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 a problem has several possible contributing factors, the method sorts causes by cause areas. It prevents an initial hunch from blocking the view of other plausible drivers. | 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 | Medium | Medium | Low | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | Ongoing | 30-60 min | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-12 | 2-8 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Fishbone Diagram, Cause Categories, Investigation Backlog | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | FlowVisual managementDelivery | Root causeQualityOperations | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |