Disadvantage of 5 whys

So in my opinion 5 times why or asking why is useful in retrospectives. My recommendation is to set a culture where people are interested to know what happened and really want to learn from it. A good retrospective facilitator knows how to do this, and will adjust the retrospective when people start feeling offended. I have to side with the author here.

The identified short-comings of the 5 Whys renders it useless for determining root causes. It is too linear; incidents are seldom caused by one event. It is not reproducible; you may be fixing the wrong issue. It can play a role in information gathering and as an assist in completing an Event and Causal Factor chart, but by itself, will seldom yield good root causes. I tend to agree with Steven, if you repeatedly ask why you get a limited view.

It explicitly looks for multiple causes and adds a time relationship to the cause-effect. In my opinion that makes it a better method than 5 times why or drawing ishikawa diagrams.

Like Print Bookmarks. Feb 28, 3 min read by Savita Pahuja. A new release disabled a feature for customers. Because a particular server failed. Why did the server fail? Because an obscure subsystem was used in the wrong way. Why was it used in the wrong way? Why did he know? Because he was never trained. What tools do we use to update the management about a change in the plan? Process capability of normal vs not normal data how do we arrive at it?

Pranay Kumar Jan 11, 0 Aabhash May 24, 0 Pranay Kumar Mar 7, 0 More Projects. More Lean Six Sigma reading material. Regular Job Posts. Vote View Results. View Options. Remember Me.

Forgot Password? Because a particular server failed. Why did the server fail? Because an obscure subsystem was used in the wrong way. Why was it used in the wrong way? Because he was never trained. How to test for electrified flood waters without tools. Warning: live electricity, including when flowing in water is dangerous and can kill you, and you should avoid it where possible. An Introduction to 5-why. Learn how to find root causes of a problem by using 5-why analysis, so you can fix the issues where it matters most.

First in a series o