When something goes wrong with your house, say water is dripping into the attic, you call in a contractor to take a look and get it fixed. They’re also responsible for getting to the root cause of an issue. Why is the water dripping in? There’s some shingles missing off the roof from the hurricane. Why were the shingles able to come off? Because the roof is old and improperly built. Why? Because the guy who owned the house before I did didn’t know what he was doing and now we have to spend a ton of money to replace it all.
Ok I got a little carried away, but the essence is there. A 5 whys is the process of continuously asking why until you find a missing or broken process that needs to be fixed or implemented. It’s something that I used at software companies to dig out the root cause of a major bug or outage. It can also be used with any type of business where there are processes to follow. A good 5 whys will find the holes in your processes, so you can plug them up and not worry the same issue will happen again. This knowledge you can then pass on to the homeowner who only thought they needed to replace some shingles, or to customers who are suffering from server issues.
I don’t do 5 whys because I’m just me, and it would sound silly to be talking to myself about a problem that’s going on. My dogs find it annoying enough that I sing to music while working all day. I also don’t have enough outside perspective to see everything that’s going on. When there’s more than one of you, a 5 whys can be a good way to figure out why things aren’t getting done for your website project, why there are communication issues between project members and if there are any misunderstandings about the project. By bringing together the designers, developers, managers and maybe even clients to ask why, you’ll find where there needs to be more processes or fix one that’s no longer working.
Though I don’t do 5 whys, I do a PIR, or post-implementation review, to look back on completed projects. I document what went right, what went wrong, what I’ve learned, how I would do things differently and what needs to change for the next project. This ensures I’m always learning from the projects I work on, and reveals things I need to fix or work on for next one.
How do you think you could implement a 5 whys into your business?
Some 5 Whys resources:
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