Root Cause Analysis

Root Cause Analysis

The link

Root Cause Analysis 

What it is

“Root Cause Analysis” is a video on how the staff of the Jefferson Memorial investigated the decay of stonework in their building. It’s a two minute video and I don’t want to spoil it for you, so please watch it before you read the “What it means to me” section.

What it means to me

This video makes a single point, and makes it very well: “You’ve seen what happens, but what is the cause?”.

Because the video is so short (a “Quality minute”) it deemphasizes how long the causality chain actually is:

• Light
• Mites
• Spiders
• Birds
• Bird droppings
• Cleaning
• Stonework Decay

The elegant solution of turning the lights on later can only be found at step seven. It’s easy to do a few of these steps, stop at “Birds” and set some kind of ugly scarecrow; it takes commitment to keep on asking. What I find inspiring in this case is that the staff only stopped asking “Why?” when the next answer would have involved genetic engineering.

In office settings, there’s also a pressure to stop investigating, meet your deadline, and “stop bothering the busy people”. Corporate IT infrastructures have their share of power washed sandstone and ugly scarecrows as a result. Let this video serve as an inspiration to “go forth and ask why”.