Understanding root cause analysis

In the previous sections, we discussed quality measures and testing to validate these criteria in a highly structured and automated way. Still, things can go wrong. The golden rule in DevOps is you build it, you run it, often followed by the statement you break it, you fix it. Or even it could be you destroy it, you rebuild it better. If something breaks, the team will need to find out what exactly happened. In this section, we will talk about root cause analysis (RCA) as one of the most important instruments for finding the cause of a problem.

RCA is the methodology for finding the exact cause of an issue. With that, RCA provides insights on how the team can improve products or services. These can be quick fixes or long-term enhancements. RCA is more than just a way to find problems; it's the start of improvement. Important questions that need to be addressed in RCA are as follows:

• What is the problem?
• Where was it found?
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