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"What's the root cause of success?" really is a nice and succinct way of illustrating the problem with root cause analysis. Of course, a million business book

"What's the root cause of success?" really is a nice and succinct way of illustrating the problem with root cause analysis. Of course, a million business book writers fancy themselves capable of answering that question, in about 300 pages or so.

phkahler 9y ago
>> What's the root cause of success?" really is a nice and succinct way of illustrating the problem with root cause analysis. No it's not. Success is usually the result of a lot of things going right. The implication is that root cause analysis is like asking why a new business failed vs succeeded. That's what a post-mortem is for. Root Cause Analysis is primarily used to find the cause of a failure in something that is otherwise working normally. Why did the rocket explode? Why did the aircraft go down? Why did the car have sudden uncontrolled acceleration? The results of an RCA are specific and actionable things that can prevent future occurrences. There may be multiple "contributing factors" discovered along the way, and it's sensible to address those as well. Nobody says to ignore all contributing factors along the way. The author also takes the failed car example and proposes a bunch of things that were not the problem and acts as if they were overlooked in asking 5 whys. Each of the why questions had a specific answer in the example, but there may have been other things looked at prior to finding each answer. He suggests that other things may have been ignored while overlooking the specific actionable items that were identified.
- zzzcpan 9y ago
  Ultimately the role of root cause analysis is to help reach said success. There is no other reason to adopt this technique, hence the fallacy.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    No. That’s like saying one could conduct a root cause analysis on a pile of parts on the ground, asking why they haven’t formed themselves into a car. Root cause analysis, by its definition, assumes that you are starting with a functioning system (turns inputs into the proper outputs) that failed unexpectedly.
    - zzzcpan 9y ago
      Functioning system doesn't imply success. You believe you can reach success by adopting certain techniques for solving problems. Doesn't mean they are net positive for it though.
      - phkahler 9y ago
        >> Functioning system doesn't imply success. It is almost a definition of success. One can refine it to include functioning under a range of conditions, or at a desired price point, or something else. But a system that functions as desired is the end goal of all engineering projects. Even if you're most of the way there in development, root cause analysis can often be used to figure out why something did not perform as desired.

phkahler 9y ago

>> What's the root cause of success?" really is a nice and succinct way of illustrating the problem with root cause analysis. No it's not. Success is usually the result of a lot of things going right. The implication is that root cause analysis is like asking why a new business failed vs succeeded. That's what a post-mortem is for. Root Cause Analysis is primarily used to find the cause of a failure in something that is otherwise working normally. Why did the rocket explode? Why did the aircraft go down? Why did the car have sudden uncontrolled acceleration? The results of an RCA are specific and actionable things that can prevent future occurrences. There may be multiple "contributing factors" discovered along the way, and it's sensible to address those as well. Nobody says to ignore all contributing factors along the way. The author also takes the failed car example and proposes a bunch of things that were not the problem and acts as if they were overlooked in asking 5 whys. Each of the why questions had a specific answer in the example, but there may have been other things looked at prior to finding each answer. He suggests that other things may have been ignored while overlooking the specific actionable items that were identified.

zzzcpan 9y ago
Ultimately the role of root cause analysis is to help reach said success. There is no other reason to adopt this technique, hence the fallacy.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  No. That’s like saying one could conduct a root cause analysis on a pile of parts on the ground, asking why they haven’t formed themselves into a car. Root cause analysis, by its definition, assumes that you are starting with a functioning system (turns inputs into the proper outputs) that failed unexpectedly.
  - zzzcpan 9y ago
    Functioning system doesn't imply success. You believe you can reach success by adopting certain techniques for solving problems. Doesn't mean they are net positive for it though.
    - phkahler 9y ago
      >> Functioning system doesn't imply success. It is almost a definition of success. One can refine it to include functioning under a range of conditions, or at a desired price point, or something else. But a system that functions as desired is the end goal of all engineering projects. Even if you're most of the way there in development, root cause analysis can often be used to figure out why something did not perform as desired.