Root cause

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A root cause is an initiating cause of either a condition or a causal chain that leads to an outcome or effect of interest. The term denotes the earliest, most basic, 'deepest', cause for a given behavior; most often a fault. The idea is that you can only see an error by its manifest signs. Those signs can be widespread, multitudinous, and convoluted, whereas the root cause leading to them often is a lot simpler.

A "root cause" is a "cause" (harmful factor) that is "root" (deep, basic, fundamental, underlying, initial or the like).

The term "root cause" appeared in professional journals as early as 1905.^[1]

Fantin (2014) describes the root cause as the result of the drill-down root cause analysis required to discover which is the process that is failing, defining it as "MIN Process" (meaning a process that is Missing, Incomplete or Not followed).^[2]

For example, projects may fail due to unrealistic expectations.^[3]

See also[]

• Causation – How one process influences another
• Forensic engineering – Investigation of failures associated with legal intervention
• Proximate and ultimate causation
• Root cause analysis – Method of identifying the fundamental causes of faults or problems
• RPR problem diagnosis

References[]

External links[]

• Bill-Wilson.net Discussion of Root Cause
• Thwink.org Discussion of Root Cause