5 Whys: Scratching beneath the surface as a Product Manager

I have always loved Hercule Poirot. A globe-trotting detective — the best of his species, finding hints at the most nondescript junctures and solving cases with utmost grace and panache! As someone who spends most of his day thinking about how to make products better, I have always found the longing to connect my work to that of my hero. And I must say my Product Manager role does give me quite a few opportunities to channel my inner Poirot — because let’s face it — it is incredibly useful to uncover the ‘Why?’ of every problem!

As Product Managers, we are expected to go beneath the surface, dig as deep as possible to arrive at the root cause of a problem and figure out a solution for it. Say there is a module that has started malfunctioning or a feature that isn’t getting traction — it is always better to dig deep and find out why that happened instead of just solving the issue superficially and moving on. In a nutshell — solve the root problem rather than just addressing the symptom.

And this is where a thinking model comes into the picture. Based on the type and complexity of the problem at hand, one can use a plethora of thinking models — Fishbone, Pareto Analysis, Root Cause Analysis, etc. In this piece, I will focus on the “5 Whys” model — a handy tool to incrementally get to the root of more straightforward problems (often ones with a linear cause-and-effect relationship).

The Origins

The 5 whys method was originally conceived by Sakichi Toyoda — a remarkable Japanese inventor and industrialist who is often remembered as the “King of Japanese Inventors”. The method was further enhanced by Taiichi Ohno during his time at Toyota Motor Corporation in the 1950s where he encouraged managers and teams to observe the production lines and use the 5 whys method to get to the root of the problems they were facing. The technique is now widely accepted and is one of the more popular models used by product teams around the world.

What is the 5 Whys method?

To put it simply, the 5 Whys method is an iterative approach that tries to progressively arrive at the root cause of the problem by asking the “Why?” question repeatedly 5 times. When faced with an issue, you ask “Why” 5 times in succession in a bid to unearth the underlying cause.

The method helps eliminate unfounded assumptions and preconceived notions from a problem-solving effort standpoint. Instead, a structured, logically uniform chain of cause and effect is formed that starts to progressively penetrate to a problem’s root cause.

Why is 5 Whys so critical in Product Management?

i) Problem-Solving with a Proactive Approach: As product managers, we encounter challenges from across the spectrum — declining user engagement, drop-offs in sign-ups, product bugs, release delays, etc. The 5 Whys method can help you get your focus sharply on the root cause of the issues by iteratively peeling away the more complex layers that would be wrapped around the problem. Also, this method can not only help solve issues at hand but also lead to the setting up of more streamlined processes/ development of enhanced features that could offset any future issues that might arise.

Eg. You might encounter a problem of reduced sign-ups — the natural tendency might be to push the marketing team to intensify marketing efforts and spend more money to bring in newer users but the issue at hand as revealed by progressively asking the Why question might be completely different — very likely a complex sign up process or say the lack of social sign-up options that are making the onboarding process rather tedious.

ii) Effective Prioritization and Decision-Making: The 5-Whys method helps establish a deeper understanding of the problem and once that is done, it helps all the stakeholders involved prioritize better and build for solutions that can support solving the issues uncovered at each iterative stage of questioning.

iii) Encourages Cross-Functional Collaboration and Puts Focus on Shared Goals: The 5 Whys method encourages teams from across the board to come together and build solutions together. The problems revealed at each stage could very well come under the mandate of different teams and tackling these challenges will entail collaboration from teams across the company — product, design, engineering, marketing, etc. Using the 5 Whys method fosters an environment that unites teams which further empowers them with creativity from shared wisdom.

5 Whys in Action

1. Bring together a team of expert troubleshooters: Unfounded and inconsistent logic and assumptions will end up derailing this technique and hence it is important to provide a safeguard against this by rallying together a team of experts who can guard against any inconsistencies.
2. Clearly define the problem at hand: This could be missed milestones, a bug, drop is sign ups, or even increasing number of customer tickets — it is extremely important to identify the challenge that is to be addressed.
3. The chain of Whys + Documentation: In an open and honest discussion, start the sequence of asking why the problem occurred. Formulate these questions based on the facts/ data and not assumptions. Keep probing — deeper with each round and for each answer put forth a why again till the root cause is found. It is important to ensure that the team agrees on the correctness of the questions, answers and concluding root cause. Start documenting your findings — it will help you as important reference points later. You will notice that with each question and answer, your chain will start getting longer and longer. You will also notice that sometimes the problem at hand might have more than 1 root cause and in that case the chain can be split into multiple layers.
4. Implement and check: Implement the solutions and see if they make the difference. If the solutions are not creating any marked difference, it may be useful to go back to your analysis and add a layer or start a new analysis.

An example

Problem at hand — Since the last release, we are seeing that a significantly higher % of drop in active users.

1. Problem — Why is there a drop in the % of active users? A significantly lesser number of users are signed into the app and are using it as per their regular usage patterns.

2. Why are lesser number of people signed into the app? A bug in the last release seems to have automatically expired the authentication token for a segment of users and they are finding it to sign back in.

3. Why is the sign in process tedious now and why are people facing difficulties? Social Login APIs don’t seem to be working consistently across devices. Also, OTP delivery is getting slightly delayed which is also blocking signing in via those routes.

4. Why are social login options not working? Our social login providers had changed the response format which the development team had not taken into account.

5. Why was this issue not discovered in the UAT? The UAT for this release didn’t happen for the sign in flow — it was only done for the hero feature of the release.

As you can see, the above 5 Whys chain of questioning has revealed quite a few problems- ones that permeate through teams — product, testing as well as engineering.

To conclude, 5 Whys is an extremely valuable tool that can help Product Managers to become better at problem solving by getting to the root of a problem. It helps in bringing in an element of proactiveness and also fosters cross functional interaction. The technique is often critiqued for being too simplistic but if your problems are more on the lines of those with a liner cause and effect relationship, 5 Whys is quite useful.

Till the next time, keep questioning, keep asking “Why?”!