Root Cause Analysis

The Prompt

Help me find the root cause of this problem:

Problem statement: [WHAT WENT WRONG]
Impact: [WHO/WHAT WAS AFFECTED]
Timeline: [WHEN DID IT START, WHEN WAS IT NOTICED]

Apply these methods:

**5 Whys:** Ask "why?" iteratively until we reach a systemic cause (not a person).

**Fishbone (Ishikawa):** Categorize potential causes:
- Process: Was the process flawed?
- People: Training, communication, workload?
- Technology: Tools, systems, infrastructure?
- Environment: External factors, timing?
- Measurement: Were we tracking the wrong things?

**Contributing Factors:**
For each potential cause, rate: likelihood (H/M/L) and impact (H/M/L).

**Root Cause Statement:**
"[PROBLEM] occurred because [ROOT CAUSE], which was enabled by [CONTRIBUTING FACTORS], and was not caught earlier because [DETECTION GAP]."

**Prevention Plan:**
- Immediate fix (stop the bleeding)
- Short-term fix (prevent recurrence)
- Long-term fix (prevent this class of problem)

How To Use It

Describe the problem as specifically as possible. Include timeline information — when it started vs when it was detected reveals detection gaps. Works for production incidents, project failures, and organizational problems alike.

Why It Works

Root cause analysis fails when people stop at the first plausible explanation. The 5 Whys forces deeper digging, the fishbone prevents tunnel vision on one category, and the structured output prevents the common failure of identifying a root cause but not the systemic fix.

Variations

Incident postmortem:

Write a blameless postmortem for this incident. Include: timeline, root cause, contributing factors, detection gap, and 5 action items (each with owner and deadline).

Pre-mortem:

We're about to launch [PROJECT]. Imagine it failed badly. What went wrong? Conduct a pre-mortem: identify the top 5 failure modes and how to prevent each.

Process failure:

This process keeps producing bad outcomes. Map the process step by step, identify where quality degrades, and suggest the minimum change that fixes the most common failure mode.