Root Cause Analysis and Gap Analysis - A Tale of Two Methods

We performed a gap analysis in an SME in order to identify SPI opportunities. One month later, we also performed a root cause analysis, based on error report data, in the same company and with the same developers. Although the two approaches are quite different, the end results turned out to be rather similar. We should be careful when drawing general conclusions from one single case study but the study indicates that for SPI, the participants’ problems, preferences and experiences are more important than the data collected in the start-up phase.