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root-cause-analysis

Diagnose why problems happened and define what needs to change so they stop happening.

  • Area: Operations
  • Category: operations
  • Level: beginner
  • Input: conversation
  • Output: document
  • Setup: none
  • Roles: Operations Manager

Diagnoses root causes of customer issues, service failures, and recurring problems using a 5-Whys framework, fishbone diagrams, and pattern matching.

How you ask

  • “Why something went wrong”
  • “Recurring issues”
  • “Systemic vs one-off”

Inputs

  • problem-statement — Brief description of the issue: what happened, who was affected, when
  • problem-statement — Description of the current issue
  • issue-records — Reference to vault issue records, support logs, or incident history if available
  • root-cause — Root cause identified from five-whys or pattern-check output
  • systemic-flag — Whether the issue was classified as systemic

Outputs

  • corrective-action-plan (markdown)
  • five-whys-analysis (markdown)
  • pattern-assessment (markdown)
  • {company.qms.root}/rca-{YYYY-MM-DD}-corrective-action.md
  • {company.qms.root}/rca-{YYYY-MM-DD}-pattern-check.md
  • {company.qms.root}/rca-{YYYY-MM-DD}.md