Root Cause

[Corb]

Does anyone have some good examples of Root Causes they could share?  We are getting ready to upgrade to r12.9 and have removed the Root Cause field from the Change Order form, but are thinking about putting it back on before we deploy.  The only caveat is that the field is shared and we want to use it on the Incident and Problem forms to.  That means either we prefix the root cause with INC:***, PRB:***, CHG:*** or we find root causes that are generic enough that all forms can use the same ones.  We would prefer to NOT have a prefix and find root causes that work for all forms, such as Hardware, Software, Network.Cable, etc.  So doing looking to this community to help brainstorm some ideas on possible Root Causes that work for you.

[Anon Anon]

Root cause at a high enough level to  be chosen from a list was depreciated by later versions of ITIL (if you subscribe to that framework) and I believe CA also depreciated the field after v12.5 when SD was ITIL aligned OOTB.  The reasoning, IMO, was that 1. If engaged the Problem process identifies the root cause  2.  We know that 80% + of all incidents are caused by Changes anyway.  The replacement to Root Cause is “Resolution Code” which is much easier to promote accurate selections than root cause.   We are just about to move from Root Cause to Resolution Code.  Here are my lists:

 

Root Causes:

 

Change (Known)

Change (Suspected)

CI Error

Data Issue

End User Error

External or Vendor

Hardware or Environment

Known Error

New Work/Premium Support

Operational

Other

PC

Security Event

Software Bug

Unknown

 

Resolution Codes:

 

Cancelled by User

Change by Other Agency

Change by Vendor

Code/Configuration Change

End User Action

Hardware Replaced

No Action Taken

Server Reboot

Service Restart

Training Gap

 

-fred SDM12.7 CABI 3.2 (SP5)

[Corb]

Fred,

               Thanks for the quick response and pointing me in the right direction.  I popped open the Greenbook and found the section on Resolution Codes.  In r12.9 they only had the Root Cause on the Issue and Change form, but the  Resolution Codes are on the Incident form.  I may still use the Root Cause, but just for the Change Orders and then leverage the Resolution Codes & Methods on the Incident forms.  The Greenbook had some good examples to so that is also helpful.  Sometimes I think I’m trying to learn how to fly the Space Shuttle when I read these Greenbooks.  So much information.

[Tammy Zadell]

Very interesting discussion... We are running version 12.7, and 'Root Cause' is on the Change Order screen.  We haven't implemented Change Mgmt yet (still using a home grown system for that), but below are the Resolution Codes we have defined for Incidents and Requests. 

 

We're soon going to be splitting out the combination code 'Started/Restarted/Rebooted/Recycled' into a few separate ones though, to assist with specifically tracking server reboots, which has recently become a big issue in our organization --

(Examples: 'Rebooted Server'   'Rebooted PC, Tablet, Phone, Other Device'   'Started/Restarted Application, Service, Session, Task, Process')

Tammy

[Kyle_R]

Hi Corb,

 

I'm marking this thread as "Assumed Answered" so that it doesn't appear in the "Open Questions" filter.

 

This is changeable by you if needed.

 

People are still welcome to post to this thread with additional "root cause" feedback.

 

Thanks, Kyle_R.

Admin.