Another 5-Why Example … Good or Bad?

Here’s a 5-Why example from a recent posting on Business Week, “Modern Analyst,” saying how wonderful 5-Why’s is.

Issue: Employees did not receive their pay stubs on payday.

· Why? Because the printing system failed the day before payday.

· Why? Because the system could not recover from a hardware fault.

· Why? Because the system uses outdated hardware that has no automatic redundant backup.

· Why? Because the system hasn’t been replaced as it hasn’t been identified as a high enough priority to allocate budget to its replacement in the current economic climate.

· Why? Because the organization does not have an enterprise planning methodology that weighs the risks of current operational systems failing versus the criticality of these systems and the impact of such a failure.

Well, what do you think? Good or bad example?

What do you think of their “root cause”?