Root-Cause Analysis

The SAFe® Problem Solving Board is a single template that guides agile teams and ARTs through each step of the Problem Solving Workshop.

Instructions:

1. Original problem. Teams should state the problem, with the ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’, and ‘impact’ as succinctly as possible. Review all statements and move the problem that should be analyzed into step 2.
2. Root cause analysis. Teams should brainstorm potential causes that may contribute to the problem in people, process, tools, program, and environment. Once a cause is identified, its root cause is explored with the 5 Whys technique. By simply asking ‘why’ multiple times, the cause of the previous cause is uncovered, and added to the description of the item.
3. Biggest root cause. Teams should review and select the biggest root cause contributing to the problem.
4. Restate problem. The biggest root cause should be restated clearly as a problem.
5. Brainstorm solution. The team brainstorms as many possible corrective actions as they can think of within a fixed timebox (about 15–30 minutes).
6. Identify improvement backlog items. The team identifies and rank orders the three most likely solutions or improvement actions. These are rephrased as improvement stories and features to be fed directly into the PI Planning event that follows.

See https://www.scaledagileframework.com/inspect-and-adapt/ for additional details.