Utility Technology Project Success Series - How to Avoid Common Pitfalls that Put Projects at Risk
Root Cause or Red Herring? A Simple Trick to Help You Understand What Went Wrong, and How to Fix It
Most utility projects don’t fail overnight — they fail quietly, over time. And often, the root cause isn’t what it looks like on the surface. Root Cause Analysis describes the difference between an apparent cause – “The substation RTU lost connectivity with the control center” and a root cause – “The communication architecture relies on a single communication path with no redundancy.”
Solving problems at the “apparent cause” level will cause us to be solving the same problem over and over. Solving problems at the root level ensures that the problem will remain solved.
At Sage, we’ve worked on project recoveries where the initial “problem” turned out to be a symptom, not the cause:
- A stalled deployment blamed on vendor delays . . . was actually due to a weak or misaligned understanding of what was needed
- Low user adoption attributed to poor training . . . stemmed from workflow impacts no one mapped.
- Budget overruns thought to be scope creep . . . were driven by an unclear value proposition from the start.
- To uncover what’s really going wrong, use the “5 Whys.” This is a simple technique that involves asking Why five times in a row. Each answer gets you closer to the true cause.
- Example:
→ Because the system is hard to use→ Why? Because it doesn’t match their workflow→ Why? Because the workflow wasn’t documented→ Why? Because that team wasn’t involved in design→ Why? Because the governance process skipped operations
That’s a very different problem — and solution — than the gut reaction of offering more training.
Root cause analysis isn’t about blame. It’s about clarity.And clarity is what leads to smarter, more resilient utility projects.
If you're stuck solving the same problem twice, it might be time to ask a different set of questions. Let’s talk about how to get to the root.