Root Cause Analysis
09:00 on Saturday, Nov 12, 2011 morning in Space Invaders (the big room)
Squirrel has slides on how to go about doing a root cause analysis (PJ reminder: get the slides from Squirrel to attach to the wiki)
Target a specific event
could do a root cause analysis on a "big" event over time, like as part of a master's thesis can be helpful to start with the "level" of pain defects are not "really" defects, they are misunderstanding should do production bugs
Everyone affected attends
the "feature" team attends, what about senior managers? representatives from other areas of the business not always good at getting "everyone" in the room one technique is to give them results from one they did not show up for
No blame
Ops folks tend toward blame Need to set it up ahead of time to avoid blame... "inoculate" people against blame Anti-pattern: as long as it isn't MY discipline, then I have gotten what I want out of this session
Poll to identify problems
Go around entire room and ask "Hey PJ, please list all the problems" Then go around the room and ask for add ons Private ballots on post-its. Email solicitation. Try to avoid proxies. Get the right people in the room
Write alot
Move down then across
If it doesn't hurt, then you aren't doing it right
Proportionate tasks
If you are re-writing your entire app because of a 3 minutes of down time, then you are not doing the right thing
All tasks done in a week
Every task agreed to:
1) Has to be do-able in one week 2) Has to actually be done in one week
How does this compare to retrospectives? Retros are related to teams, the pain is more direct
Other techniques for NOT losing focus? Keep it short term The next root cause analysis might highlight the "next" step, but for now, "all we have to do now is take this first step"
