Book of the Month

We generally understand a root cause as being the underlying cause of why a particular issue happens.

One thing to understand about root cause analysis is it attempts to reveal the hidden causes and effects behind a particular event. In its standard form, Root Cause Analysis is a reactive process

Reactive actions generally appear in unique situations (i.e. we are unprepared for the situation). Proactive actions are taken in expectation and knowledge ahead of time to prevent undesirable outcomes from occurring. This is an important distinction because conducting a root cause analysis (reactive) is a way of growing the database of possible causes and their corrections to provide proactive actions to reduce risk on the project.

There are three forms of Risk Management using Root Cause Analysis:

• Reactive: mitigate the severity of risk events and threats.
• Proactive: identify risk and safety concerns before these events happen.
  Predictive: anticipate future exposure based on past performance data.

Here are some resources for applying Risk Management and Root Cause Analysis 

This book is a recent example of applying Root Cause Analysis. It is about the accidental shoot-down of a UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter over Northen Iraq and the investigation into the cause of this accident.

This book and the resources listed about may provide motivation to apply Root Cause Analysis to projects in a manner not traditionally found in the literature to increase the probability of project success.

from Herding Cats