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I now trust if something comes up that we didn’t foresee, we’ll conduct a 5 whys and learn from it. At the same time, it lets us not have to worry about issues that haven’t happened. Here’s how our former CTO Sunil Sadasivan describes the changes that have resulted from making these a routine part of how we operate: “What I really like about this is that it lets us worry about issues when they happen, and it helps us work towards ensuring they won’t happen again. Additionally, it helps a team create small, incremental steps so that the same issue doesn’t happen again (to anyone).Īt Buffer, the habit of conducting 5 Whys originated from the engineering team.
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It’s important to note that the purpose of the 5 whys isn’t to place blame, but rather to uncover the root cause of why something unexpected occurred. Any time something unexpected happens, we could do some root cause analysis.” These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules. Here’s how Eric Ries explains: “Five Whys involves holding meetings immediately following the resolution of problems the company is facing. We’ve held these discussions in every facet of Buffer, from engineering to happiness to marketing and more, and the same process holds true no matter whether the problem is technical or more human-based. ‘Fires’ of various sizes are inevitable-and probably the only constant in the life of a startup. How the 5 Whys process worksĪt our startup, we perform a “5 Whys” after something unexpected has occurred-and that means we perform them a lot! We keep a “5 Whys” folder in our team’s Dropbox Paper account, and the folder has 20+ notes files and counting (not to mention the 5 Whys docs that might not be categorized into the folder). A lot of what we know at Buffer in implementing the 5 Whys has come from The Lean Startup‘s Eric Ries, who does an amazing job describing the 5 Why’s in these two posts. Today, the method is used far beyond Toyota, and it’s particularly popular in the world of lean development. Here’s an example Toyota offers of a potential 5 Whys that might be used at one of their plants. “Ask ‘why’ five times about every matter.” “Observe the production floor without preconceptions,” he would advise. Ohno encouraged his team to dig into each problem that arose until they found the root cause. by repeating why five times, the nature of the problem as well as its solution becomes clear.” Taiichi Ohno, the architect of the Toyota Production System in the 1950s, describes the method in his book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production as “the basis of Toyota’s scientific approach. The 5 Whys technique was developed and fine-tuned within the Toyota Motor Corporation as a critical component of its problem-solving training.
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Let’s take a look at the origin and history of this unique process, and I’ll tell you a bit about how it works for us on our remote team at Buffer-and how it could work for you, too. It’s just as it sounds: A discussion of the unexpected event or challenge that follows one train of thought to its logical conclusion by asking “Why?” five times to get to the root of what happened.īut it’s also a lot deeper than that, too. Moments like these are when we at Buffer turn to a simple but remarkably effective process: The 5 Whys. Tools break, wires get crossed, the best-laid plans fall apart.Īnd on those occasions, it helps to know exactly what happened-so it doesn’t happen again.
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Sometimes things don’t go according to plan.