Harnessing success via the SRCA (Success Root Cause Analysis)
Postmortems are great for learning from failures, as shared in Root Cause Analysis — an essential systems skill. Practicing RCA’s are a key part of good engineering culture with the goal of figuring out what cultural, process or architectural reasons underly a failure of the system.
RCA’s are approached from a perspective of discovering reasons for failure — how do we learn from failures. But there is much to be learned from successes as well. Dissecting success enables teams to learn from what went well and the ‘whys’ behind them. In a team with a learning mindset, this translates to a team that performs better by learning from others.
The SRCA follows the same template and playbook as an RCA.
Write from the perspective of the reader
If the learnings are to be adopted by others, it has to be written in a way that is appealing and understandable to the reader. So make sure the readers perspective is being taken into account.
Get Leadership involved
Success has to be understood and driven by leaders in the organization. Participation by leaders drives home the importance of the SRCA. Leaders can then help disseminate key practices that drove success in an SRCA
The 5 Whys
Use the 5 Whys in a mirror image kinda way. Instead of getting to the root cause of failure, get to the root cause of success. Keep going till you are able to attribute the key elements of culture, architecture or process that enabled success.
Be generous with praise
Call out the individuals who played a key role in success. Highlighting them shines the spotlight on the success as well as the traits that the organization looks for. Focus on those who were able to break through obstacles and how they did so.
Ask for a commitment from other teams
Finally, ask other teams to come back with any adjustments they might want to make as a result of this.
