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I would modify the section on root causes. It's not a fundamentally bad idea to look for root causes (plural). It's essential to not stop at immediate causes. M

I would modify the section on root causes. It's not a fundamentally bad idea to look for root causes (plural). It's essential to not stop at immediate causes. More or less, you start at immediate causes and then recursively go deeper until you get to things that cannot be changed and/or are not within your control. One real danger is believing in a root cause or the root cause (singular) as if there is only one. The desire to only have to change (or understand) one thing is dangerous because it leads you to stop investigating/analyzing as soon as you have found something to blame it on. As you go deeper through the chain(s) of causes, you also should not focus exclusively on the last (root) because that means you aren't thinking about defense in depth. TLDR, follow the chain of causes all the way to its ends, realize it may have multiple ends, and don't focus only on the surface stuff or only on the root stuff.

di4na 6y ago
You are making the assumption that causality is useful and exist in these complex systems. Dr Cook base his treaty on what we know from the research of them, which is that these causal links are far less stronger than you think. This means that searching along a causal tree is indeed detrimental fundamentally.
- adrianmonk 6y ago
  I'll give an example to illustrate. Situation: my software service stops working because it ran out of disk space. Insufficient focus on root cause: I add more disk, do nothing else, and assume it's solved. Excessive focus on root cause only: I investigate, find there's a leak where old data never gets deleted, call it the root cause, fix the leak, and do nothing else. Balanced approach: I fix the leak AND stop running at such tight margins (allocate breathing room) AND add automated monitoring for low disk space. The lesson to look for the root cause is valuable. Without it, disk space fills up rapidly and my other measures to insulate against that can only go so far. But if it's all I do, that's also bad.

di4na 6y ago

You are making the assumption that causality is useful and exist in these complex systems. Dr Cook base his treaty on what we know from the research of them, which is that these causal links are far less stronger than you think. This means that searching along a causal tree is indeed detrimental fundamentally.

adrianmonk 6y ago
I'll give an example to illustrate. Situation: my software service stops working because it ran out of disk space. Insufficient focus on root cause: I add more disk, do nothing else, and assume it's solved. Excessive focus on root cause only: I investigate, find there's a leak where old data never gets deleted, call it the root cause, fix the leak, and do nothing else. Balanced approach: I fix the leak AND stop running at such tight margins (allocate breathing room) AND add automated monitoring for low disk space. The lesson to look for the root cause is valuable. Without it, disk space fills up rapidly and my other measures to insulate against that can only go so far. But if it's all I do, that's also bad.