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| Criterion |  Operations Waste Analysis |  Agile Affinity Estimation |  Engineering Kanban |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | For a process that keeps people busy but creates little value, the method exposes waste. It directs attention to unnecessary movement, waiting times, rework, and overdelivery. | 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. | 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 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. |
Complexitydifferent | Low | Medium | Medium | Medium |
Timedifferent | 45-120 min | 30-90 min | Ongoing | 1-3 h |
Participantsdifferent | 2-8 | 3-12 | 2-12 | 4-10 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Waste Map, Prioritized Waste, Improvement Backlog | Affinity Size Map, Grouped Estimates, Unclear Items | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list |
Tagsno overlap | WasteLeanProcess improvement | EstimationBacklogRelative sizing | FlowVisual managementDelivery | LeanFlowWasteDelivery |