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.

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