Course

A Practical Guide on Root Cause Analysis

Don’t stay on the surface, start digging

Hours

Videos

Questions and answers

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What will you learn?

We often think the world of problem-solving is easy – one cause for a problem. Reality check, it’s not. Problem-solving is dirty, chaotic and full of uncertainty. In real life, it’s even unusual to have a single cause and only a single effect. Systems contain many cause-effect relationships that interrelate in complex ways, so it is often unclear what causes it. Deciding what to change is often even more problematic because the people with experience often have only a narrow view of the parts of the system they interact with. They don’t see the bigger picture. So yes, this cause analysis is essential in finding solutions.

Stop accepting quick fixes

People are experts in finding quick fixes to problems. They only focus on the symptoms they see, hear, or feel, but they forget to dig for the problem’s root cause.

Is that something you recognize? Well, then you’ve come to the right place. In this course, we will provide the tools and techniques that improve your chances to successfully solve a problem by digging for the root cause(s). You’ll see that this only tackles one step of your typical problem-solving framework. However, it’s a pivotal step to take in the messy reality of problem-solving.

8 sanity checks to overcome challenges

  • Clarity: everything should be clear
  • The truth and nothing but the truth: fact-check first
  • Correlation is not causality: Polio and ice cream consumption – are they related?
  • Indirect effect: add additional relationships to guide your audience
  • Remove duplicates: discover tautologies
  • Insufficient cause: what else?
  • Vicious cycles: don’t fall into a downward spiral
  • Emotions: be logical

Find all causes

  • Which stakeholder do we need to involve?
  • How do we know we’ve found all causes and relationships?
  • When do we stop our analysis?

Find actual causes

Learn how to find the best answer to your question. Using a set of simple techniques, you’ll grasp how to identify the set of causes that best explain the problem. You can do some things: group cause to reduce complexity, gather evidence, and find your Pareto optimum. All of these techniques are discussed in detail in this course.
Ideally, when approaching this course's final module, you have found the cause underlying the problem. At this point, you start looking at solutions to remove the cause from the equation. We hope this is the result you achieve when following the course. However, we do give you some final pointers as well for when the result is inconclusive.
Meet the instructor
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Jasper Bosmans

Business Architect - Trainer
Jasper Bosmans is a passionate Business Architect. With experience in Business Analysis, Functional Analysis, and Innovation Management, Jasper strives to solve companies' most challenging problems with (technological) solutions to accelerate growth & optimize the customer experience.

Professional development

The Master Channel - Mastery Level Certificate

Complete all the content of a course and earn a score of 80% or higher on the exam to earn your Mastery Level Certificate.