The Five Whys technique is a tool to help in root cause analysis and I thought it might be a good excercise to try out in a retro.
What is it?
If you want to get to the root cause of the problem, you ask yourself why something has gone wrong. Then to that answer, you ask why again. The theory is, once you have repeated that process five times you will have a better understanding of the root cause of the problem.
Not all questions will have a single answer, and this is fine, but then you should ask why to each subsequent answer. This is why I find it helpful to document a Five Whys excercise as a tree diagram
As with any tool or technique, it’s not perfect. It may not give you a silver bullet answer and it relies upon the people involved to think of the causes and not the symptoms but anything that can help you think and frame a problem is good for me.
How it went in a retro
To start I had everyone write post it notes of things they felt could have gone better since the last retro. Then we each had two votes to decide on which post it we would discuss. That point was then the basis for our Five Whys activity.
It was really interesting putting Five Whys in to practice. The questions very quickly started giving more than one answer. As a team we decided which branch we wanted to follow and keep questioning. It was surprised how much information came out when the conversation was guided by the Five Whys technique.
Once we had got to the fifth why I felt that the actions we were taking away were focused, small, and addressing the root cause of the problem. While they might not fully resolve the initial problem, as they are only addressing one of possibly many root causes, I feel having a small focused action that will be a step towards solving the problem is a good thing.
The response from the team after the session seemed pretty positive. I think it was helpful to frame the conversation around the model. Or at the very least, sometimes it’s good to try new retro formats to keep things interesting.
If anyone else has any good ideas for retros, please let me know. It would be great to hear some new ideas.