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jkingsberytoday at 4:35 PM1 replyview on HN

There's a reason 5 Why's Analysis is a thing. If you just say "here's a bunch of stuff we're changing," but you haven't said enough about the root cause, then no one will understand whether we're doing enough (or too much; or the wrong things). I like the framing of being empathetic - everyone is smart, doing the best they can with their knowledge and experience at the time - but sometimes we didn't do all the right things, and getting feedback from more senior engineers helps drive that improvement.


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locknitpickertoday at 4:44 PM

> There's a reason 5 Why's Analysis is a thing. If you just say "here's a bunch of stuff we're changing," but you haven't said enough about the root cause, then no one will understand whether we're doing enough (or too much; or the wrong things).

No, that's not the point at all.

Root cause analysis and context and tradeoff analysis and plans are still critical requirements.

But not everyone needs to do root cause analysis and evaluate tradeoffs and review plans. Some stakeholders don't need any of that. They pay you to care, so that they don't need to.

What these stakeholders care about is whether you can fix things, how are you planning on how to fix things, how many resources you need to allocate to fix things, and when are things fixed.

Different audiences require different messages because they have different concerns and responsibilities.

Does a project manager need to know the failure rate of a DSL connection of a customer that reported an outage? You might, but does the project manager need to?

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