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Today we take the first step in conducting RCA; but before we get to that, we need to attend to another issue. A crisis has occurred in your business (alternatively, there's a non-critical but significant error thats happened several times), so you decide to assemble a team to conduct RCA. Who's on the team?
The first team members should be the people who were directly involved in the crisis: the people who made the error and/or the people who identified the error. These folks are key to your success, because they're the ones who will help you identify what was going on before the crisis blew up; they're also your best bet for identifying the top secret factors that may have led to the crisis.
Your next team members should be business analysts or other subject-matter experts (SMEs) who have in-depth knowledge of the part of the business where the failure occurred.
Your remaining team members should be bright people from various departments. Don't limit the RCA team to employees from the department where the failure happened, as such a team will be limited in terms of perspective. Use RCA as an opportunity for your best and brightest to learn about a part of the business they don't ordinarily see. This gives your employees broader knowledge of your business, and also gives your RCA team the benefit of outsider perspectives. Try to keep the team to a manageable size - I typically use RCA teams of 6 people, give or take a few. If the group is too large, you may find that the process gets bogged down in too much discussion. This is definitely not a hard-and-fast rule, though; decide what size team works best for you.
You may wonder whether senior management should be involved in RCA. I tend toward leaving senior management out of RCA, for two reasons:
- The role of senior management is to plan strategy and direction; middle management's job is to manage the day-to-day.
- Line-level employees may be intimidated (by the presence of a director or VP in the conference room) and therefore less likely to speak freely.
You've assembled your team, and you're finally ready to begin with the first step of conducting RCA:
Agree on what the problem is.
Piece of cake, you say. We already know what the problem is - that's why we're here! Oh, if only it were that simple. I'd suggest a brief overview of the crisis or error that brought the group together, and then start working to define precisely the problem that the group is going to analyze. Do not assume that everyone is on the same page, and don't assume that the problem is sufficiently self-evident that discussion is unnecessary. It may be self-evident to you, and perhaps to your SMEs; but the folks from other areas of the business may need clarification.
The entire team must operate with a single definition of the problem. Why is this so critical? Well, if everyone doesn't have the same understanding of the problem, then you might waste a lot of time and effort analyzing a problem that isn't the problem at all. I once facilitated a session during which we got two hours into a fishbone diagram before we realized that the problem we were analyzing was the wrong problem. To say that the group was frustrated would be a gross understatement, and you can bet I didn't make that mistake again.
Take the time to discuss the crisis or error until everyone is in agreement and understands exactly what the problem is. The more time you spend defining the problem, the more smoothly the rest of the analysis will flow.
Tomorrow: step 2 of conducting RCA.
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