a method that identifies causal factors,

A systematic process to identify the factors, which contributed to an incident.

A process for identifying the basic or contributing causal factors that underlie variations in performance associated with adverse events or close calls.

Analytical methods to determine the core problem(s) of an organization, process, products, market, etc.

A process improvement and error or defect prevention tool that examines the individual processes within a system, identifies the control or decision points, and uses a series of why? questions to determine the reasons for variations in the process paths.

A Telcordia standard for Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) architectures. The objective of RCA is to reduce the amount of analysis time spent determining why multiple alarms occur. It is expected that network management of a large-scale data network may receive up to 700 alarm messages per second during peak operating periods. To handle this level of alarm traffic RCA automatically processes certain alarm messages in predetermined ways one of them being automatic generation of a trouble ticket for the root cause of a problem that generated multiple alarm messages.

A method of preventing negative consequences ( UDEs) by reviewing and evaluating system performance.