Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
The process of determining the fundamental causes of issues in order to identify viable remedies is known as root cause analysis (RCA). RCA believes that consistently preventing and resolving core issues is far more successful than treating ad hoc symptoms and putting out fires.
- Snippet from Wikipedia: Root cause analysis
In science and engineering, root cause analysis (RCA) is a method of problem solving used for identifying the root causes of faults or problems. It is widely used in IT operations, manufacturing, telecommunications, industrial process control, accident analysis (e.g., in aviation, rail transport, or nuclear plants), medicine (for medical diagnosis), healthcare industry (e.g., for epidemiology), etc. Root cause analysis is a form of inductive (first create a theory [root] based on empirical evidence [causes]) and deductive (test the theory [underlying causal mechanisms] with empirical data) inference.
RCA can be decomposed into four steps:
- Identify and describe the problem clearly
- Establish a timeline from the normal situation until the problem occurs
- Distinguish between the root cause and other causal factors (e.g., using event correlation)
- Establish a causal graph between the root cause and the problem
RCA generally serves as input to a remediation process whereby corrective actions are taken to prevent the problem from recurring. The name of this process varies from one application domain to another. According to ISO/IEC 31010, RCA may include the techniques Five whys, Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA), Fault tree analysis, Ishikawa diagram, and Pareto analysis.