Tehokkaan juurisyyanalyysimenetelmän kehittäminen ja arviointi ohjelmistotekniikkaan
Lehtinen, Timo Olli Antero · Aaltodoc (Aalto University) · 2010
Software companies face problems in software development. This has consequences that motivate the companies to develop corrective actions to avoid the reoccurrence of the problems. It is argued that the key for effective problem prevention is to know why a problem occurred. Root cause analysis (RCA) is a structured investigation of a problem to identify which underlying causes need to be fixed. The goal of the research was to develop, evaluate and further develop an RCA method (ARCA), which is appropriate for software companies. The research consisted of a literature review, development work of the ARCA method, and four industrial cases where the ARCA method was applied to problems of the case companies. Through the literature review different RCA applications were analyzed and commonly recommended RCA practices were recognized. These were exploited when the first version of the ARCA method was developed. The cases enabled researchers to collect feedback. Evaluating the feedback helped in developing the method further. The ARCA method includes four steps: Problem Detection, Root Cause Detection, Corrective Action Innovation, and Documentation of the Results. Problem Detection consists of selecting a target problem and collecting its preliminary causes. Root Cause Detection consists of a workshop session where the causes of the target problem are detected, analyzed and organized into a cause-effect diagram. Corrective Action Innovation consists of a workshop session, which is focused on developing corrective actions for the most important causes. Documentation of the Results consists of documenting the detected causes and corrective actions. The ARCA method is performed by an RCA team which is lead by an RCA facilitator. The team consists of target problem experts including project managers, product managers, developers, and testers. The team members are selected for both workshop sessions separately, because they might require different expertise. The ARCA method is an efficient RCA method for corrective action development in software companies. The method helped develop many corrective actions which were believed to be feasible with considerable impact on eliminating the target problem. Organizing the detected causes was experienced as challenging. We assume that this was caused by the high number of detected causes. On the other hand, the ARCA method was experienced as easy to learn and use in general, and as a better method for problem prevention than the current state-of-practices in the case companies. The success factors of the ARCA method were: 1. collecting and analyzing target problem causes, and 2. developing corrective actions by writing them on paper and rotating them through the RCA team members. The effort of applying the ARCA method was experienced as proper or slightly too high. This was caused by a high number of RCA team members. The greatest challenges of the method are facilitating the cause organizing task and lowering the required effort.