There are situations where we need to analyze what caused the failure or problem in a project. Fish bone or Ishikawa diagram is one of the important concept which can help you list down your root cause of the problem. Fish bone was conceptualized by Ishikawa, so in the honor of its inventor this concept was named as Ishikawa diagram. Inputs to conduct a fish bone diagram comes from discussion and brain storming with people who were involved in the project. Below figure shows how the structure of the Ishikawa diagram is.
Below is a sample fish bone diagram. The main bone is the problem which we need to address and to know what caused the failure. For instance the below fish bone is constructed to know what caused the project failure. To know this cause we have taken four main bones as inputs Finance, Process, People and Tools. For instance on the people front there are many resignations à this was caused because there was no job satisfaction à this was caused because the project was a maintenance project. In the same way causes are analyzed on the Tools front also. In tools à No tools were used in the project à because no resource had enough knowledge about the same à this happened because of lack of planning. In process front the process was adhoc àthis was because of tight dead lines à this was caused because marketing people over promised and did not negotiate properly with the end customer.
Now once the diagram is drawn the end bones of the fish bone signify the main cause of project failure. From the below diagram here’s a list:-
Figure: - Fish bone / Ishikawa diagram