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I find it problematic that this recommends the Five Whys to get to "the root cause". Haven't we collectively moved past that?
by drdrey 7y ago
I find it problematic that this recommends the Five Whys to get to "the root cause". Haven't we collectively moved past that?
- teraflop 7y agoWould you care to explain why you find that problematic?
- drdrey 7y agoSee this post by John Allspaw: https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-infinite-hows https://www.oreilly.com/ideas/the-infinite-hows > The Five Whys, as it’s commonly presented, will lead us to believe that not only is just one condition sufficient, but that condition is a canonical one, to the exclusion of all others. Five whys presents itself as a way to dig deep but promotes doing so linearly and getting to a singular thing you can fix, hiding a lot of potential learnings along the way. Thinking about contributing factors is a much more powerful framework.
- lrem 7y agoI find it useful: you'll find at least one problem deep down. The more surface problems will get worked on anyways. In any case, the point is to make your system more robust over time.
- james_s_tayler 7y agoThe notion of a "root cause" itself is flawed. It's causes acting in concert which cause problems and they all enable each-other.