The ‘Five Whys’ exercise helps a team get to the root of an issue. By asking “Why?” five times in succession, teams can peel away the layers of symptoms and discover the underlying issues. When facilitated using an online whiteboard tool, this exercise becomes even more interactive and effective, making it perfect for remote and distributed software teams.
We call this the ‘Focused Version’, because it helps you get to an actionable plan in a shorter amount of time.
How to run the Five Whys exercise
Identify the main problem (5 mins)
- Agree on a clear and specific statement of the issue you’re exploring.
- Once this is defined, start asking “Why”. “Why did that occur?” “Why did that happen?” “Why didn’t this process prevent it occurring?”
Start the Five Why’s process (25 mins)
- For each step, brainstorm all possible reasons.
- Conduct a voting round to find the top issues.
- Decide how many issues to focus on.
- Continue to explore the issues through the remaining swim lanes.
Identify solutions (15 mins)
- In the same way you make actions at the end of a retrospective, the team should come up with as many solutions and mitigations as possible.
- These can then be voted on, and mapped against the relevant stage in the swimlanes.
- You can then devise an action plan from the solutions.
Get Started
Start using our Five Whys template today to uncover the root causes of your problems and drive effective, lasting solutions.
