Fishbone Diagram

Use this to find the root causes of issues. Also know as Ishikawa diagram or cause-and-effect diagram.

• Define the problem (Eg. User Signups for newsletter are less than metric)
• List contributing factors or Categories
  • Breakdown the problem into different areas(Eg. Signup Form issues, Content is not interesting, Wrong type of people visiting)
  • Generic Categories: People, Equipments, Methods, Measurement, Material and Environment
• List possible causes for each factor/category.
  • Eg. Under Signup Form Issues, there will be causes like: Too many form elements, Form asking data like credit card that people don't want to share, Form page loading is slow, etc.
  • Ask why is it happening
  • Use the 5 Whys approach.
  • Use First Principles
  • List all issues you can think of
• Analyze the findings
  • Prioritize the causes and solve

This has a visual layout - but you can get the same effect by doing a nested list.