Root Cause Analysis (5 Whys, Fishbone)

Summary

Techniques for digging past a symptom to find the actual underlying cause of a problem — the 5 Whys repeatedly asks 'why' until reaching the root, a Fishbone diagram organizes potential causes by category.

• 1Run a 5 Whys analysis on a real or hypothetical problem you've encountered.
• 2Build a Fishbone diagram categorizing potential causes of a process failure.
• 3Learn why stopping at the first 'why' often just addresses a symptom, not the real cause.