The Why & The How of Effective Root Cause Analysis

Do you have operational or technical problems that linger? Thought you had squashed it last time, only to have the multi-headed monster come back? And at the worst possible time too.

Anyone working in today's business world has faced complex operational problems and incidents. After 2 decades in the corporate world, I am no stranger to major incidents and Friday evening firefights. Just when we thought we could relax and see a movie, an old issue decided to re-surface. Real life turned into a semi-horror movie, with web pages crashing, customers complaining, and sales plummeting. With the collective breath of anxious executives warm on the back of our necks, it became anything but stress-free.

What I learned from handling numerous incidents is that to solve problems for good we need solid root cause analysis (RCA). RCA can locate the gremlins lurking in our products and services, and dramatically increase the reliability of our operations. And of course, prevent the stressful firefights. No matter what your business, if you can find and fix an issue at its source, once and for all, you will avoid repeat problems that harm your business revenue and reputation. Short-cuts and temporary workarounds are just that - they do not work long term.

Goals & Methods of Root Cause Analysis

The top goals of RCA are to:

1. Prevent repeat incidents
2. Learn from the event
3. Increase product or service reliability.

Yes, RCA does take time and effort, but as the saying goes - "A stitch in time saves nine." Thorough root cause analysis is almost always worth the effort, as the longer-term benefits are very significant.

Finding the true root cause requires a systematic approach. Without that, hidden causes can be easily missed, especially for complex problems. To ensure an effective RCA different teams in your organization need to examine the problem from various perspectives - What, Where, When, How and Why. The RCA process is fundamentally collaborative, requiring inputs from different subject matter experts. Often, a dozen or more experts are involved, and it can even require hundreds of people for large systems.

One of the most popular methods for doing RCA is to use Ishikawa's Fishbone Diagrams. Fishbone analysis breaks a problem down to its potential causes and sub-causes, displaying them as a compact hierarchy in the diagram.

It is a quality tool recommended by Six Sigma and is a tried and true method of RCA in many domains including finance, healthcare, manufacturing, aerospace, transportation, and IT operations. In some cases it is required for compliance to ensure that a problem, such as an aircraft incident, is investigated thoroughly.

Scaling to Complex Problems & Virtual / Large Teams

While the Fishbone diagram is very effective in the structure it provides, it does not scale well to complex problems, as the diagram gets overly complicated and unclear with deeper analysis. Adding 4th or 5th level sub-causes makes the diagram very cluttered and nearly impossible to read.

Also, an often-heard complaint is that it is difficult for teams to collaborate well on RCA. This is especially true in this digital era of remote work. Teams are virtual and distributed, making shared understanding harder to reach. They get out-of-sync easily, causing delays and difficulties in the RCA process.

So, what can we do differently to solve these scalability and collaboration issues for RCA?

Our Solution

At smartQED we strongly believe in the power of visual collaboration and structured, scalable RCA. Here is what we do:

• We support in-depth analysis for complex problems through our visual workspace with layered Fishbone-based Investigation Maps?. You can attach evidence, notes, and actions to create a complete 360° view of your investigation, and view it in layers without getting lost.
• We enable virtual teams to collaborate efficiently - our Investigation Maps put everyone on the same page quickly through integrated status tracking and reporting.
• We speed up future RCA with a built-in learning and recommendation engine to guide investigations. smartQED learns as you work - it is our patent-pending technology.

Our product is built based on our real-world experience, and has our insights ingrained in it. The smartQED team uses smartQED for RCA of our own problems and incidents. The result is a problem-solving knowledge repository that helps us identify true root causes and avoid patchy problem fixes that can fail in uncertain ways at critical times.

To try out our solution for yourself, please open a free account at https://app.smartqed.ai. No credit card is required, and we do not spam or harass you with incessant emails. You can also schedule a demo here or contact us at [email protected].

Experience the combined power of our visual collaboration and scalable RCA, and measure the real increase in reliability and customer satisfaction of your business. Visit us at https://smartqed.ai to learn more.