Having been involved in RCAs since 2019 and trying to run them collaboratively for teams since 2023, I have become a huge fan of them as a means to learn and improve.
If you’re not familiar with RCAs (root cause analysis), they are an activity where you identify the real reason why a bug escaped. At a shallow level you can go “missed test case” or “incorrect null handling” but there’s a lot more to doing meaningful RCAs than this.
I have a collection of blog posts available to outline their value and share some ideas that will help you run meaningful RCAs yourselves.
- Why they are valuable
- Process not individuals
- Involving the right people
- Asking Why
- Structuring the questions
- Documenting the RCA result
A big shout out to Richard Newman for getting me involved in RCAs and helping me get going in running them and for Stu Ashman for helping me ask better questions… plus of course the teams Auld Reekie, Lagavulin, Talisker, Haggis and Cranachan for their engagement and tolerance as I needed to get better at running them.