Root cause thinking for engineering leaders
See the method applied to real problems in the gallery.
Most postmortems stop at the comfortable answer. Here's a structured approach that finds what actually went wrong -- not just what's safe to say out loud.
Your retro surfaces the same issues every sprint because it's optimized for comfort, not truth. Here's a better structure -- with a template you can use Monday.
Technical debt doesn't grow because engineers are lazy. It grows because the system that produces it is working exactly as designed. Here's how to find the real cause.
Your team isn't getting slower. The accumulated weight of unexamined assumptions is dragging them down. Here's how to find what's actually killing velocity.
Most organizations never close the gap between stated and real problems—not because their people lack intelligence, but because honest interrogation has no structure.
Most teams treat symptoms. Here's a first-principles approach to finding what's actually broken -- and why the same problems keep coming back.
The estimate was fine. The requirements were clear. It still shipped late. Here's what's actually going wrong -- and it's not what you think.
5 Whys is a start, but it breaks down for complex engineering problems. Here's a structured approach that actually reaches the real cause.
Your team ships on time, on spec, and it still doesn't solve the problem. The issue isn't execution -- it's excavation.
First principles isn't just a buzzword. Here's how CTOs and tech leads can apply it systematically to cut through organizational complexity.