> Term
Root Cause
The fundamental underlying flaw that allowed an incident to occur.
Detailed Explanation
The trigger is what started the fire; the root cause is why the house was made of dry paper. Discovering the root cause usually requires asking 'Why?' five times until you transition from technical errors (a missing index) to human/process errors (we have no review process for database migrations).
Why It Matters
Fixing the root cause is the only way to guarantee that specific class of incident never happens again.
Common Failure Mode
Practical Example
Production Manifestation
Realizing the memory leak wasn't caused by a bad library, but by a lack of memory monitoring that allowed it to grow silently for six months.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Root Cause in short?
The fundamental underlying flaw that allowed an incident to occur.
What is the most common failure mode?
Stopping the investigation at 'the server crashed' instead of asking 'why did it run out of memory?'.
AI Summary
The fundamental underlying flaw that allowed an incident to occur. Fixing the root cause is the only way to guarantee that specific class of incident never happens again.