Identify the root cause of the problem to analyze, track, and resolve recurring incidents permanently.

Before you begin

Role required: problem_admin, problem_coordinator, problem_manager, or admin

About this task

Activate the Problem Management Best Practice — Madrid — State Model (com.snc.best_practice.problem.madrid.state_model) to get the new best practice states and guided actions to navigate the life cycle of a problem. For details, see Activate Problem Management Best Practice — Madrid — State Model.

Figure 1. Root cause analysis
root cause analysis state

Procedure

You can perform any one of the following tasks.
OptionActions to be taken
Investigate the problem
  • If you are the subject matter expert for this problem area, carry out the investigation and provide the cause notes and fix notes on this problem.
  • If you are not the subject matter expert and you want help with the investigation, create a problem task of type root cause analysis and assign that to the relevant team. Once the subject matter expert has completed the problem task, then you can manually copy the cause notes and proposed fix from the problem task to this problem.

For more information about creating a problem task, see Create a problem task.
If you can resolve the problem Click Fix. The problem state changes to Fix in Progress. You can then create a new Change Request or link to an existing Change Request to apply a permanent fix to the problem.
Note: Notification is sent to the problem coordinator, who is assigned to the Problem, when all the related Change Requests are completed or canceled.
If you acknowledge the problem but there is no permanent resolution to the problem Click Accept Risk. The problem directly enters the Closed or Resolved state with the Resolution code as Risk accepted.
Note: Whether the problem enters the Closed state or the Resolved state, depends on the property Accept Risk moves the Problem to Closed state instead of Resolved state (problem.acceptrisk.move_to_closed).
If you decide to reanalyze the problem Click Re-analyze. The problem opens for reanalysis and the state is changed to Root Cause Analysis.
If you had created any known error article for this problem or any similar problem, you can add the reference of that article in the Primary Known Error article field.
Note: The Primary Known Error article field is available only when you activate the Problem Management Best Practice — Madrid — Knowledge Integration plugin (com.snc.best_practice.problem.madrid.knowledge).

What to do next

You can resolve and complete the problem. You can also create a change request to implement a fix for the problem.