Page 22 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

Rain, rain go away. An IT Project Management lesson from the floods

As I write this, Annesley, where Stoneseed is based, is in
the grip of some really wet weather. Homes evacuated,
roads closed, fields turned into lakes and streets into
rivers. It prompted me to call a friend who had suffered
at the hands of similar rainfall some years ago and as we
spoke, an IT Project lesson emerged from the depths of
the floodwaters.

Some time ago, my friend left IT Project Management to
run a pub (wise choice I hear you say!).

A couple of years back though, he was questioning the
sanity of that decision. Rain that had swamped parts of
the midlands and the north had begun to flood into the pub, and it was only the quick thinking of
staff and regulars that stopped it from causing serious damage.

Anyway, the reason I mention this in an IT Project Management blog is that, as mentioned, really
heavy rain has fallen in the same region again this last week and I called my friend to see if all is OK.
It is, but only, he tells me, because he borrowed from skills learned in his IT Project Management
career.

What skills?

Root Cause Analysis

The pub had suffered from flooding in the past, this had been pointed out when he took on the lease
and, in fact, one of the images he noticed on the wall when he viewed the premises was of the
sandbagged front door after a previous downpour!!

Previous landlords had assessed the cause of the problem, or so they thought, and acted upon their
findings by ensuring that there were enough sandbags. But the problem they’d identified was only
half the problem. Sure, the flooding of the pub was caused by heavy rain swelling the river, but the
real damage was caused when this excess river water reached the inn’s door.

The difference, this time, was that my friend had carried out a thorough root cause analysis and
worked out where the flood waters were breaching the outer perimeter of the pub’s beer garden.
He shored up flood defences at this point and as the rain came down and the river spilled over, it
stayed away from the front door altogether.

This is a great example of Root Cause Analysis.

Root cause analysis (from here let's call it RCA) is a problem solving, issue identifying, corrective
measure perfecting technique. Instead of fixing the symptom, which is where many project teams go
wrong, RCA provides a means to isolate the cause of a problem. So, root cause analysis helps identify