What do you do when there's a production bug?
Do you point fingers and blame each other on the team or take that as an opportunity to learn and improve?
A lot of times I have seen on many teams when there is a production issue they work pretty hard on fixing the issue as soon as possible and just forget about it. Whenever there's is such situation, the actions shouldnt just be for fixing the issue but also finding out the 'why'.
There are different approaches that teams can use to find out about the root cause. Here's one of them -
5 Why's
This is one of the approach that can be used as a team to figure out the underlying causes. Here's how you can do it :
Collaborate as a team
Have someone as a facilitator and gather(in person or remote) the team and the people who are familiar with the specifics of the production issue.
Start with a prime directive so everyone understands, feel positive to contribute and let them know that the session is more towards to learn and find solutions to improve not to blame anyone.
Define the problem or production issue
To start with, give the context and define a brief problem statement so all the team understands what the issue was.
Start with the first "Why"?
Ask the team why did the problem occur. Add notes as you go, if you using any tool such as miro or mural add those stickies.
Continue asking "Why" for each answer four more time
Ask why and add reasons next to each why.
Actions
While discussing the reasons and why, come up with any actions and assign it so someone from the team can action it.
This is one of the approach that can be used to find the root cause as a team and come up with the actions that can help in improving the process.
This can be kept as simple and short or more detailed and long depending upon the context.
What approach does your team take when dealing with production issues? Share them in the comment below.