Today, with companies increasingly in need of its information technology resources, allowing failures and inconsistencies to occur in them can be highly detrimental to the business.
Maintaining the proper functioning of an IT infrastructure, although it is one of the great challenges faced daily by professionals in the sector, is also one of the most important measures to ensure the availability of their systems and, consequently, their operations.
In this context, an elementary IT concept comes into play: Root Cause Analysis (RCA). Behind it are several measures of management and control of IT infrastructures, in order to identify the root of failures and thus prevent recurrence.
Want to understand a little more about RCA and how it can be developed? That's what we'll show you throughout this post. Keep reading and check it out!
WHAT IS ROOT CAUSE ANALYSIS?
In general terms, RCA is nothing more than a process used to identify the events responsible for the failures of machines, equipment, software and other components of a company's IT infrastructure, whether physical or logical.
The focus of this procedure is to use this information to formulate contingency strategies and avoid failures. In other words, it's a way to improve IT operation from mistakes.
RCA helps determine the following factors:
- What happened;
- what reason led to the occurrence;
- better alternatives to reduce the likelihood that it will happen again;
HOW DOES THIS PROCESS WORK?
The operationalization of this process occurs on three fault approaches, namely:
- physical or technical failures — physical, ie tangible, components have somehow failed;
- errors of human origin — whether through an unsuccessful intervention or omission, someone has failed to perform as he should;
- in organizational systems, operational procedures and in the process of decision-making — an internal system, process or policy was not in line with the company's needs and generated an error or insufficiency;
After the analysis phase of these failures, a report is prepared, pointing out their causes and effects. From there, we move on to the stage of a comprehensive plan to prevent the recurrence of these problems.
It should be noted that, currently, there are software capable of monitoring and increasing the management power of the company's systems, such as New Relic, which provides complete visibility into the IT infrastructure, allowing fault identification quickly.
WHY IS IT SO IMPORTANT THAT IT PROFESSIONALS KNOW HOW TO IDENTIFY IT?
The importance of identifying the root cause lies in the way this measure optimizes the company's IT processes.
More than acting on the symptoms perceived by the teams, RCA seeks to go deeper, identifying and ending the main cause.
This, in addition to solving the problem, increases business productivity by reducing errors and reducing the costs of corrective measures, as it eliminates the need to make the same repair more than once.
HOW TO PUT A RCA INTO PRACTICE?
There is no single way to perform an RCA, however, there are more common methodologies, divided into stages and which end up proving to be quite efficient.
Let’s look at one of these ways to operationalize RCA:
FIRST PHASE: PROBLEM DEFINITION
This is the starting point and one of the most important phases of the process. From the observation, IT professionals are based on the following questions:
- What did you visualize?
- What are the specific symptoms?
SECOND PHASE: DATA COLLECTION
Here, the focus is to gather information capable of responding to the following items:
- What evidence is there that the problem occurred?
- How long has the problem been around?
- What is the impact(s) of this issue for the business?
Os IT managers and managers need to analyze the situation completely before being able to indicate the factors that contributed to the emergence of the problem.
Thus, in order to achieve greater efficiency in the RCA, it is necessary that all those involved understand the situation and give their opinion.
After all, individuals who are closest to the processes tend to be more familiar with the problem and can help lead to a better understanding of the facts.
THIRD PHASE: IDENTIFICATION OF POSSIBLE CAUSES
At this stage, the most important thing is to identify as many causal factors as possible. For this, it can be very useful to answer the following items:
- What sequence of events caused the problem?
- What conditions made it possible for the problem to occur?
- What other problems permeate the occurrence of the central problem?
It is important to mention that there are methods that can help in the identification of causal factors. Two of the most used are the Cause and Effect Diagram — or fishbone, as it is also known — and the “5 whys” technique.
FOURTH STAGE: IDENTIFICATION OF THE ROOT CAUSE
At this stage, you get to the heart of the problem. Here, we work with the aim of finding the root of the failure and then trying to solve it.
Once again, some questions are the basis for improving the process. Let's see what they are:
- Why is there the causal factor?
- What is the real reason the problem occurred?
FIFTH STAGE: CREATION AND IMPLEMENTATION OF THE ACTION PLAN
Once the root cause identification process is complete, the focus now shifts to solving the problem. At first, the necessary answers are:
- What can be done to prevent the problem from returning?
- How will the solution be implemented?
- Who will be responsible for this?
- What are the risks involved in choosing this solution?
It is essential to carefully analyze the cause and effect process in order to identify what changes are necessary for the various systems involved.
In addition, the process must be planned in advance to anticipate the outcome of the solution. This way, it is easier to detect possible failures before they happen.
Finally, Root Cause Analysis is a highly strategic function within a company's IT landscape. The power of improvement provided by the methodology is easily noticed from the optimization of the IT infrastructure and the constant reduction of the most different errors that can happen.
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