As many parents can attest, getting asked "why?" over and over can be extremely frustrating and annoying.

Child: "What are you doing?"

Parent: "Putting on my shoes."

Child: "Why?"

Parent: "Because I need to go outside."

Child: "Why?"

Parent: "To mow the lawn."

Child: "Why?"

Parent: "Because the grass is long."

Child: "Why?"

Parent: "..." *sigh*

Personally, I love this stage of children growing up. It shows me they are curious and wanting to learn. Inside of that little head of theirs, they are coming to grips with the actions we are taking and reason for those actions. Instead of being annoyed, we need to learn from these children, as they are utilizing a technique that can make our projects more successful.

The 5 Whys Technique

The 5 Whys technique can be utilized to great effect in determining the root cause of a problem. By asking why in an iterative fashion, you can break down a problem (effect) to the root cause(s).

Okay, so how does it work? It is pretty simple really. You first take the identified problem (effect) and simply ask, "Why?" Once the answer is given, you reformat the statement to again ask, "Why?" You repeat that until you have asked "Why?" a total of five times. What ends up happening at each why is you break down the problem to the next level. Methodically driving your way from the problem to the root cause.

To further explain, let's use an example. Imagine that you are working as a Business Analyst and asked to design an enhancement to the existing software to allow an Administrator to enter the Sales team's leads into a system. When asked the return on investment behind the request, Sales states it is too difficult for them to enter the leads the leads themselves. Now that we know the problem, let's use the 5 Whys technique to break it down.