5 Why's

From Internet

The 5 why's typically refers to the practice of asking, five times, why the failure has occurred in order to get to the root cause/causes of the problem. There can be more than one cause to a problem as well. In an organizational context, generally root cause analysis is carried out by a team of persons related to the problem. No special technique is required.An example is in order:

You are on your way home from work and your car stops;
Why did your car stop? Because it ran out of gas.
Why did it run out of gas? Because I didn't buy any gas on my way to work.
Why didn't you buy any gas this morning? Because I didn't have any money.
Why didn't you have any money? Because I lost it all last night in a poker game.

I hope you don't mind the silly example but it should illustrate the importance of digging down beneath the most proximate cause of the problem. Failure to determine the root cause assures that you will be treating the symptoms of the problem instead of its cause, in which case, the disease will return, that is, you will continue to have the same problems over and over again.

Also note that the actual numbers of why's is not important as long as you get to the root cause. One might well ask why did you lose all your money in the poker game last night?

Following is an example of the 5 Whys analysis

as an effective problem-solving technique:

Why is our client, Hinson Corp., unhappy? Because we did not deliver our services when we said we would.

Why were we unable to meet the agreed-upon timeline or schedule for delivery? The job took much longer than we thought it would.

Why did it take so much longer? Because we underestimated the complexity of the job.

Why did we underestimate the complexity of the job? Because we made a quick estimate of the time needed to complete it, and did not list the individual stages needed to complete the project.

Why didn't we do this? Because we were running behind on other projects. We clearly need to review our time estimation and specification procedures.

Key Points:
The 5 Whys strategy is an easy and often-effective tool for uncovering the root of a problem. Because it is so elementary in nature, it can be adapted quickly and applied to most any problem. Bear in mind, however, that if it doesn’t prompt an intuitive answer, other problem-solving techniques may need to be applied