The 4 Root Causes of Outages (and How to Fix Them)

Once an outage is resolved, it’s essential to figure out the root cause and how to prevent it from happening again.

Root cause analysis helps pinpoint what specifically caused the issue. Keep in mind, this isn’t about assigning blame—it’s about identifying what went wrong to improve the system, not identifying someone to point fingers at.

Typically, the root cause falls into one of these categories:

1. Individual Mistake:
When an individual makes a mistake, consider how you can make that mistake impossible in the future. For example, create an admin screen instead of allowing direct database access.

2. Team Oversight:
Even well-planned efforts sometimes fall short. When plans don’t work as expected, it’s often due to an oversight. This can be addressed by giving the plan time to breathe—stepping away for a while allows the team to catch potential issues before they become problems.

3. Product Quality and Reliability:
TDD. That’s all…
No, seriously—writing tests is the most effective way to improve your system’s quality and reliability. Get good at it.

4. External Systems:
This is the tricky one. You can’t control external systems, so you need to handle their failures gracefully. Isolate third-party systems so they aren’t scattered across your codebase, and make sure you account for expected error conditions.

By proactively addressing these categories, you can prevent issues that are difficult to fix on the fly.