Most of us would have at some point in time would have been asked to do RCA and provide a report. There are a couple of approaches like Fish Bone and 5 why’s which are often used for this. These approaches worked very well for most of the problems I was trying to solve. Most of my RCAs were related to system outages, bugs in code, process conformance, and equipment failure.

However when I was trying to do a RCA and determine why a metric is deviating from a expected value. (Let me give you a few examples Average watch time has reduced by 10%, another example would be a decline in course completion rate.)

I realized that my earlier approaches were not very helpful. So started searching the internet to find a solution. After some intense searching, I found an interesting framework, which was cleverly summarized in a mnemonic CRIE.

C-Clarify
R-Ruleout
I-Internal factor
E-External factor

C-clarify

It is very important to not assume the definition of the metric, it should always be clarified. Ask more questions to understand the problem, and try to outline the approach as well during this phase.

R-Ruleout

Try to list and explore all possibilities. Rule out possibilities that you think are out of scope, and verify if the data supports your thinking. start diagnosing the causes. while dealing with a metric which is a ratio, check the numerator and denominator. it will give you some additional insights. try to find the metric which is responsible for the change observed.

Internal Factor

After identifying the metric, you need to figure out what is causing this change. find if internal factors are in play. for example, some new feature that was released, a bug in the system, and price changes.

External Factor

Look if external factors are at play, you can check if customer behavior is changing, or a bad PR is in play, try doing competition analysis, geo-political changes, new product launches, or sales with large discounts.

Hope this blog could provide you a structured approach. Will do another post with an example of this framework in action