Starting a Root Cause Analysis

Owned by JamieS (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Nov 04, 2015 by Jess Utech (Unlicensed)
2 min read

You've been tasked to fix a bug or investigate an issue and you believe you have finally identified what the Root Cause of the problem is. In the past you would implement the required fix to address the root cause of the issue you are investigating and move on to the next piece of work or task. In this scenario, you may be the only person who gains valuable experience from the resolution of the issue. This is where the Root Cause Analysis plugin springs into action!

With the Root Cause Analysis plugin you will now spend a little bit of time tracking down what caused the root cause of the problem to surface in the first place. Was it a coding problem? Was it a branch merge issue? Was it something out of the hands of the person working on the original issue?

Once you have analyzed the root cause of the issue enough to be able to answer these questions and have tracked down the JIRA issue that the root cause change was made under, you are ready to start documenting your analysis within the Root Cause Analysis plugin!

How to Document the Root Cause Analysis

  1. Within the JIRA issue that you have been assigned to fix the bug or problem. Click on the Enter Attributer Data button.



  2. You will be presented with the Attributer dialog popup.



  3. Set the Root Cause Issue field.
  4. Set the Determination field.
  5. Populate the Attributer Summary field.
  6. Click the Update button to save the changes or click the Close link to discard the changes.

 

The Root Cause Analysis plugin will attempt to automatically identify the users associated with the identified Root Cause Issue. Email notifications will be sent to all users (as many as three) identified so that they can help contribute to the Root Cause Analysis.

Until the users who are notified about their required involvement take the time to review the analysis and provide a summary of their own the Attributer Summary will be the only summary completed. Once a Root Cause Analysis is completed all users will have had a chance to analyze the root cause and provide their input. 

The end result should look similar to this:

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