The Root Cause Fallacy: Hidden Causes
12 days ago
- #Root Cause Analysis
- #Five Whys
- #Complex Systems
- The root cause fallacy highlights that complex failures rarely have a single cause, but rather multiple contributing factors.
- The Five Whys method, while useful, can oversimplify by demanding a single answer when multiple causes exist.
- Example of a 3 AM database crash shows multiple causes: memory overflow, failed monitoring, broken scaling policy, and suboptimal query.
- Success and failure both stem from multiple factors, not just one root cause.
- When analyzing failures, it's important to rate the contribution of each cause and address them based on impact.
- The article suggests inversion as a method to explore multiple factors by asking why something is successful or working without problems.
- The complexity of systems requires looking beyond simple explanations to understand and solve problems effectively.