Root Cause Analysis is the process of discovering the underlying of problems in order to identify effective solutions. RCA assumes that it is much more effective to systematically prevent and solve for underlying issues rather than just treating ad hoc symptoms and putting out fires.
Problem solving, incident investigation and root cause analysis are all fundamentally connected by three basic questions:
- What’s the problem?
- Why did it happen?
- What will be done to prevent it?
Here’s a presentation I gave some years ago on the topic, providing a brief overview and some applications of Root Cause Analysis.
Tom Cremins 