When there is a serious problem in the development of your business, you definitely need to find out and how determine the root of the problem. Instead of thinking complicated and long, you only need to ask ‘why’ five times. Lol, can that be? Calm down #GenerasiPenemu, a more detailed explanation is below.

In developing a business, especially a startup that requires fast development in a short time, you will surely encounter many problems. As we know, human instinct is to rush to find solutions to problems they encounter without first finding out what the cause is, even though every problem has a cause. When asked what is the cause of the problem, you may not know because you are too focused on solving the problem.

How Determine The Root of The Problem

Before rushing into a solution, it’s a good idea to stop and turn around, take a deeper look at the cause of the problem. At this point you must be wondering how. The easiest way to determine the root of the problem is to ask the word ‘why’ five times. Asking ‘why’ five times doesn’t mean you repeat the same question over and over again without a pause or a yes, #GenerasiPenemu, but asking ‘why’ up to five times means asking a different question in each question word.

Asking the question word ‘why’ five times is commonly referred to as Why Why Analysis, which is one of the root cause analysis tools for an existing problem, or often also referred to as part of Root Cause Analysis. Root Cause Analysis is one of the tools of Lean Startup in solving a problem that is often encountered in the development of a startup or business.

Steps to perform Root Cause Analysis

So that you can help your team solve a problem in your business by determining the root of a problem, it helps you understand the steps to perform a Root Cause Analysis.

Step 1 – Define the problem

Define problem means that you try to explain in as much detail as possible about what problem is happening right now. In explaining the problem, you also need to explain the signs that explain the existence of the problem.

Step 2 – Collecting data

The data here are things related to the problem you want to solve, such as evidence of the problem that the problem really exists and interferes with the development of your business, tracking history or how long the problem has existed, and also what impact it has. you or the team feel the existence of the problem.

Step 3 – Identify possible causes

What might be the cause of the problem can be found out by ordering the process from which the problem appeared until it was finally detected or found, under what conditions the problem arose, and what other problems might arise and follow because of the main problem.

When identifying this problem, Why Why Analysis can play a role in helping you identify the causes of a problem. For example, when you face the problem of a car breaking down. Why Why Analysis here can take the form as follows:

1. Why does the engine stop suddenly? — Because the car battery emits smoke.
2. Why does the car battery emit smoke? — Because the battery has passed the lifetime limit of 6 months.
3. Why can the car battery pass the lifetime limit? — Because the car battery is not replaced or serviced.
4. Why is the car battery not replaced or serviced? — Because no one knows when to replace or service the car.
5. Why doesn’t anyone know when the car should be serviced or replaced? — Because there is no record.

Step 4 – Identify the root cause

Identify the root cause using the same tools as step 3 above. The difference is, you just need to dig deeper into each possible cause of the problem. If you use the same problem example as in the previous step, then the identification of the root of the problem here can be in the form of the following:

1. Why does the battery emit smoke?

• Because the battery has passed the lifetime limit of 6 months
• Because the car is often not heated
• For not doing daily checks before using the car

2. Why does the battery exceed the lifetime limit?

• Because the car battery is not replaced or disservice
• Because they feel that there have been no problems
• Because there is no budget to replace

3. And so on…

Step 5 – Determine the solution

When you have determined the root of a problem, you can also determine the cause of each level of the main cause of the problem and what the effects are. This way, you can understand why a problem exists, what the root cause is, and what kind of solutions are needed to prevent the same problem from happening again. In addition, you can also consider how the solution chosen to prevent the problem from reoccurring can be implemented effectively and efficiently.

Well, that’s the explanation of Why Why Analysis and how to do root cause analysis to determine the root of the problem. What do you think, #Inventors Generation? Pretty easy to apply, right?

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