Root cause analysis

From An Agile IT

Root Cause Analysis

Root cause analysis (RCA) is a reference to many problem solving methods aimed at identifying the root causes of problems or events.

When problems occur it is best tactically solve the problem but then strategicaly look to correct or eliminate root causes, as opposed to merely stopping once you have tackled the immediately obvious symptoms.

By putting effort into identifying root causes, it is hoped that the likelihood of problem recurrence will be reduced. However, it is not always possible to identify a single prevention and RCA is often considered to be an iterative process.

Any RCA process must be seen as a tool embedded within the organisations culture. Reviews at the end of iteration should look at root cvauses to feedback into work in later iterations.

Any RCA process is only as good as the people performing the process as if you don't have the skills available you will not be able to identify the cause and you will typically stop at a symptom.

Question asking method

One RCA method is to ask questions to explore cause/effect relationships underlying a problem. This is a useful tool but should never be used in isolation.

For example, "My will not start"

- Why? The battery is dead.

- Why? The alternator is not functioning.

- Why? The alternator is broken and can't be repaired.

- Why? It is old and past its end of life date.

- Why? I have not been maintaining my car and so didn't spot this.

5 Iterations of asking Why? will typically get to a symptom. Some potential problems in this approach do exist:

• can only go as far as the knowledge of the people present.

• tendency for people to stop at a symptom, In the above example this could be "it is old and past its end of life date". Although this is correct it does not help us with putting something in place to stop re-occurrance.

• different people may come up with different results.