Root Cause Analysis: Dealing with Problems, Not Symptoms

Test managers often choose solutions to problems without sufficient analysis, resulting in a cover-up of the symptom rather than a solution to the underlying problem. Later, the problem may surface again in a different disguise, and we may mishandle it again, just as we did initially. Alon Linetzki describes a simple process you can use to identify the root causes of problems and create an appropriate solution to eliminate them. Alon shows how he enhanced the classic root cause analysis method to create an approach to finding insidious problems in software and processes. His method includes ways to differentiate symptoms from problems, understand the connection between them, and determine the strength and direction of that connection. Alon illustrates this method with data from two testing projects and shares the lessons learned along the way.

• Simple, robust method for determining underlying problems
• Differentiating symptoms from problems
• Solve problems rather than cover symptoms