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My experience with Root Cause Analysis is it's often an exercise for poor managers to deflect accountability by diluting it among more junior people. However,
by motohagiography 8y ago
My experience with Root Cause Analysis is it's often an exercise for poor managers to deflect accountability by diluting it among more junior people.
However, 5-whys is very useful as a design principle instead of using it to respond to failure.
It goes something like:
0: build a thing
why 1: because customer asked
why 2: because thing is what they think they need
why 3: because it is one solution to a gap in their ability to achieve something.
why 4: because that something is an economic need.
why 5: because market opportunity to fill that gap with something, maybe this thing, maybe something better.
- amygdyl 8y agoI suspect that this is because a human propensity exists to allocate and apportion blame, particularly in cases where the interactions involved in the immediately prior actions are unclear. I have actually not even once encountered this 5 Why's method. I neither heard of it before. But I founded my company in 1996, starting out with almost two hundred years of experience surrounding my incredulous and lucky younger self, including several PhDs and former Fortune 500 board members. I will hazard that this 5whys technique is fundamentally flawed and easily susceptible to manipulation for procuring a scapegoat. I only hope that explains why I have never encountered this before. I hope moreso I can feel a little like somethingwas going on in the right way, in my business, to filter and reject what I think is, and definitely comes across as bogus to me.