RCADesk – new module for root cause analysis
Are your development teams blocked by impediments? Are you sure you solve the right problems?
Agile teams often hit a wall with problems they are not able to solve easily. More often they even try to solve just the first level of problems and not root causes.
Process improvement is fundamental practice for ScrumMasters. No, Scrum mastership is not about appointments or standups. It is about the flow, kaizen, and improvements.
Great scrum masters try to understand problems more deeply. They try to find out root causes and rather solve them. These are reasons why RCADesk is handy for agile managers and scrum masters.
Free in the next 30 days
RCADesk module is available in 30-days trial period for everybody using ScrumDesk. After that period it can by bought in MARKET page available in the application. RCADesk is sold for $70/one time payment per company account. Once it is bought, all team members will be able to create theirs RCA diagrams without additional cost.
Create new RCA map
RCADesk is available by default in 30 days trial mode for free. It can be activated or deactivated in MARKET in the left menu. As RCADesk is a commercial module, it should be bought after the trial period ends.
Click on RCA menu item in the left menu activates RCA diagrams editor. Click green + button to add new diagram and drag diagram card from the list of diagrams into the center of the screen. This is going to open new diagram.
New root cause map
The mind map is described with two types of elements:
- Nodes represent problems, reasons or tasks.
- Lines represent dependency or relation between nodes.
The node is described by:
- title of the node,
- author of the node,
- multiformatted description of the node,
- freely editable category of a node.
How to add possible reason of your problem
Every node has Why? button displayed in the top right corner. Click on it to add a new node into the map and new node will be automatically connected to the origin node.
There can be multiple reasons of your problem. Click the central node and add additional reasons by click on Why? button. Feel free to move the newly created node to the appropriate place in your map.
The hierarchy depth is not limited in RCADesk. You can evidence as many details as needed.
Relations
Relations between nodes are directed lines pointing to the origin problem. Every line can be described by name of the relation. The title can be changed in side view once the line is clicked.
Sometimes one node depends on multiple other nodes. By the way, this is typically the candidate for root cause as more paths on the diagram are related to that node.
To add additional relations click the node and keep the left button down for 250 ms. Reason A.2 is such node related to multiple other nodes.
Moving nodes
The map can be moved around by drag. Also nodes can be moved around by drag on the title of the node. Click on the node displays details in side view where they can be changed or commented.
What do we plan for RCADesk?
The aim for the currently available version was to provide possibility to analyze the problem and describe it into more depth.
In future versions will be provided:
- Colors and formatting of nodes and dependencies.
- Map auto-levelling.
- Problem solving tasks integrated with WORK view. You will be able to plan such tasks, assign them to a sprint and track status of the implementation on kanban board and on the RCA map as well.
- Tracking of KPI per nodes so you can understand how much is problem solved.
- Possibility to share maps even without ScrumDesk tool (PDF, pictures, etc.)
