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| Criterion |  Agile WSJF |  Engineering Kanban |  Delivery Value Stream Mapping |  Operations 5 Whys |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Purposedifferent | When many tasks compete for the same capacity, it orders work by economic impact. It makes time lost, benefit, and effort comparable together. | 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. | 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 | High | Medium | Medium | Low |
Timedifferent | 45-90 min | Ongoing | 1-3 h | 15-30 min |
Participantsdifferent | 3-10 | 2-12 | 4-10 | 2-6 |
Formatdifferent | Workshop | Workshop + async | Workshop | Workshop |
Outputdifferent | Ranked Backlog, Cost-of-Delay Assumptions | Kanban board, WIP policies, Flow metrics | Current-state map, Future-state map, Bottleneck list | Root cause notes, Countermeasures |
Tagsno overlap | LeanEconomicsSequencePrioritization | FlowVisual managementDelivery | LeanFlowWasteDelivery | Root causeIncidentLeanProblem solving |