Root Cause Analysis is a problem solving activity where an explicit attempt is made to identify the root cause of a particular fault or issue.
In software development, unless a bug has always existed in a particular piece of functionality, there will always be a single attributable root cause.
Identifying the root cause is not always easy and unless you have spent enough time analyzing a particular bug, it is difficult to know if the fix you are about to propose is in fact fixing the root cause of the bug or just one of many potential symptoms.
So in reality, whenever a developer is investigating a known bug for a potential fix they are in essence performing a Root Cause Analysis but using the resulting information gleaned from the process only for their immediate bug fixing efforts.
How Does the Root Cause Analysis Plugin Help?
- Allows the developer fixing the bug to document the root cause issue in a consistent manner.
- Allows the developer fixing the bug to summarize how the bug was exposed, what they did to fix it, and provide any insight into what could have been done differently in the identified root cause issue which would have avoided having the bug raised in the first place.
- Allows the developer fixing the bug to determine if the bug could have been avoided before resolving/closing the root cause issue (i.e. Insufficient testing? Unit test creation to try various edge cases?)
- Provides notifications to users who had worked on an issue that has been identified as a Root Cause Issue. This provides unparalleled feedback to users about the downstream affect of their work.