Red Hat Enterprise Linux Troubleshooting Guide

Root cause analysis

Root cause analysis is a process that is performed after incidents occur. The goal of the RCA process is to identify the root cause of an incident and identify any possible corrective actions to prevent the same incident from occurring again. These corrective actions might be as simple as establishing user training to reconfiguring Apache across all web servers.

The RCA process is not unique to technology and is a widely practiced process in fields such as aviation and occupational safety. In these fields, an incident is often more than simply a few computers being offline. They are incidents where a person's life might have been at risk.

The anatomy of a good RCA

Different work environments might implement RCA processes differently ...