Root Cause Analysis Levels of Root Cause Root Causes can be found at any one of the following levels: Incident or procedural level Example: A fight in the cafeteria, fifth period on Wednesday. Programmatic or process level Example: There are always fights in the cafeteria, every day, at every period. Systemic Example: There are fights everywhere in school. External level Example: The whole community is fighting. It is important not to make an "incident" into a systemic or to treat a true systemic issue as simply a bunch of incidents. Examples of elements at each level are: Incident or procedural level: priorities the student morale the test planning the teacher budget the incident policies allocation of staff Programmatic level: facilities curriculum/assessment technology instructional processes competencies materials collaboration setting evaluation time history alignment capacity grouping scheduling External level: training and staff development family administrative procedures community gangs Systemic level: wealth/poverty leadership health mission partnerships and supporting vision agencies culture the values/beliefs youth organizational structure There are those who believe that if we dig deeply enough, seeking cause within a system, we will nearly always end up at the system level. These same people will go on to say that there are
Root Cause Analysis Levels of Root Cause Root Causes can be found at any one of the following levels: Incident or procedural level Example: A fight in the cafeteria, fifth period on Wednesday. Programmatic or process level Example: There are always fights in the cafeteria, every day, at every period. Systemic Example: There are fights everywhere in school. External level Example: The whole community is fighting. It is important not to make an "incident" into a systemic or to treat a true systemic issue as simply a bunch of incidents. Examples of elements at each level are: Incident or procedural level: the student the test the teacher the incident Programmatic level: curriculum/assessment instructional processes materials setting time alignment grouping scheduling training and staff development administrative procedures Systemic level: leadership mission vision culture values/beliefs organizational structure priorities morale planning budget policies allocation of staff facilities technology competencies collaboration evaluation history capacity External level: family community gangs wealth/poverty health partnerships and supporting agencies the youth There are those who believe that if we dig deeply enough, seeking cause within a system, we will nearly always end up at the system level. These same people will go on to say that there are
root_cause_analysis.docx