5 Whys

' The first answer is almost never the real cause. Most organizations stop at Why 2 or Why 3 and fix the symptom instead of the source. Run this drill separately for each distinct symptom you identified during problem scoping. Your Root Cause Drill Symptom: _________________________________ Why Question Answer Why 1 Why is this happening? Why 2 Why is that happening? Why 3 Why is that happening? Why 4 Why is that happening? Why 5 Why is that happening? True root cause: _________________________________ ...

“In enterprise AI the model is rarely the problem. The system around it almost always is.” A customer rep promised a discount. It was the right discount. The model said so. The problem — the policy had changed three days earlier. The model didn’t know. The customer was already engaged. The promise was already made. The rep couldn’t honor it. The customer was furious. When I was brought in, the team’s instinct was to retrain the model. Expensive. Time-consuming. And in this case — completely wrong diagnosis. ...