After you’ve run your 5 Whys approach, you should have a better sense of root causes. But, like Smolko mentioned, there are more places begging for deeper review and critical thinking. RCAs can use different approaches and tools to help unpack complex challenges.
Fishbone Diagrams
You may also see these called Ishikawa diagrams or cause-and-effect diagrams, but they’re called fishbone diagrams because they look like a fish’s skeleton. These diagrams help you map potential contributing factors to your specific problem.
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Begin by placing your problem belgium telegram data at the “head” of the fishbone. Then, identify major categories like people, processes, and tools. Under each category, brainstorm all possible causes contributing to the problem. For instance, I would put “speedy hiring and onboarding” under the processes category.
Finally, analyze how these causes relate to each other and your problem. The fishbone visual helps you organize thoughts around complex problems and spot missing connections and opportunities.
Pro tip: If you’re looking to hop right into a fishbone diagram exercise, check out our free fishbone diagram template for a head start.
Affinity Diagrams
An affinity diagram helps you organize and analyze large data sets. You place data and ideas into groups based on their relationships with each other.
Start by gathering data from multiple sources, focusing on anything pertinent to your problem. Then, define categories and sort that data into groups. Label each group and analyze potential connections for patterns and potential root causes.
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For my team’s challenges, I could grab data from exit interviews, performance metrics, and qualitative surveys from clients and team members. Natural buckets like Training Deficiencies or Lack of Support might surface, and connections between data would show them as points to begin addressing immediately.
Pareto Charts
If you’ve been around project when did the renault logo appear? management, you’ve heard of the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Rule. Succinctly, it’s the concept that things in life aren’t distributed equally. As in, 80% of your company’s production comes from 20% of its workers.
Applied to RCA, a Pareto chart operates from the underlying concept that a few root causes are responsible for most of your problems.
Start with a list of potential causes business sale lead related to your problem. Then, you count every time to see each cause affecting the outcome in your data. The causes with higher frequency tend to be the “bigger challenges” to solve.
For instance, while going through my 5 Whys exercise earlier, we could categorize my team’s frustrations and count instances where it appeared in the data. Inadequate training may have appeared 15 times, while high workload only appeared 5 times.