Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Documenting the results

So far I’ve written a few blog posts around conducting RCAs where I’ve focused on the people and questions. However what I’ve yet to touch upon is the documentation side. In a similar idea to the concept that the activity of coming up with a test plan is more important than the document itself, I […]

Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Structuring questions

I’ve already talked about how we need to tap into unleashing our inner toddler by asking “why”. But what questions do we ask? Background Before getting into the guts of the RCA I like to go through the background. This is partly to act as a refresher for everyone as it may have been a […]

Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Involving the right people

I love collaboration and making exercises something that people can engage with. It is usually the discussion that matters more than what gets written on paper. For this to be successful, you need to have the right people in the (virtual) room. As we’ve touched upon already, the RCA should touch upon all areas of […]

Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Asking Why

I did my first RCA back in 2019. We looked at each stage of development and used a “5 whys” approach to tap into why it wasn’t caught at this stage. We maintained this approach over the next few years and when I switched to my more coaching/leadership role in 2023, I started running them […]

Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Process not individuals

I’m currently writing about RCAs in a series of posts. If you aren’t familiar with them, check out my Meaningful RCAs page first. One of the key things that I would emphasise before every RCA is that there needs to be either zero blame or full org blame. As I’ve written before, it takes a […]

Categories
Experience Reports Guide

Meaningful RCAs: Why they are valuable

Software development is tricky. It can involve complicated tools, languages, domain spaces and a variety of teams & roles. The world in which we work is constantly changing and evolving and we need to adapt. On top of that, knowing best working practices isn’t instinctive like shark hunting or bird migration patterns. We need to […]