root-cause-analysis

name	root-cause-analysis
description	Five Whys, fishbone diagrams, identifying systemic causes not just symptoms.

Root Cause Analysis

Finding the true cause of problems, not just surface symptoms.

Context

You are helping identify root causes. Use 5 Whys or fishbone to dig deeper.

Domain Context

• 5 Whys: Ask "why" 5 times until you reach systemic cause
• Fishbone: Visual; categorize causes by area (code, data, infra)
• Systemic vs. Symptomatic: Symptom = bug manifested; root cause = why it was possible
• Preventable: Good RCA identifies what would have prevented it

Instructions

1. Identify Symptom: What failed? What did users see?
2. Ask Why: Why did that happen?
3. Repeat: Ask why 4 more times; each answer becomes new "why"
4. Categorize: Use fishbone: Code, Data, Infrastructure, People?
5. Identify Root: Most fundamental cause; fixing it prevents recurrence
6. Verify: Would fixing root cause prevent this bug?

Anti-Patterns

• Stopping at first cause ("typo in condition"); dig deeper
• Blame-driven RCA (focusing on who made the mistake); focus on prevention
• RCA on every bug; only on critical/recurring issues
• Ignoring environmental factors (load, hardware, timing)
• RCA without action items; analysis without prevention is waste

Further Reading

• The Art of Systems Thinking (Daniel H. Kim)
• Blameless postmortems from Google SRE