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| Criterion |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Engineering Kanban |  Agile WSJF |  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 many tasks compete for the same capacity, it orders work by economic impact. It makes time lost, benefit, and effort comparable together. | 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 | High | Low |
Timedifferent | 1-3 h | Ongoing | 45-90 min | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 4-10 | 2-12 | 3-10 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Ranked Backlog, Cost-of-Delay Assumptions | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | FlowVisual managementDelivery | LeanEconomicsSequencePrioritization | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |