Root Cause Analysis (RCA)

Find the real cause, not just the symptoms, to prevent recurrence.

RCA Principles

1. Look for systems failures, not human errors
2. Ask "why" until you find actionable causes
3. Multiple contributing factors are common
4. Prevention > blame

Method 1: 5 Whys

Keep asking "why" until you reach an actionable root cause.

Example: API Outage

Problem: API returned 500 errors for 45 minutes