Root Cause Analysis

# 🐞 Root Cause Analysis Playbook

## 🎯 Purpose

Use this playbook to systematically investigate bugs, production incidents, failures, regressions, performance issues, and unexpected system behavior.

Rather than jumping to conclusions or proposing immediate fixes, this playbook helps identify the true root cause, assess impact, and recommend corrective and preventive actions.

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# ✅ When to Use

Use this playbook when you want to:

* Investigate a production incident
* Debug a difficult bug
* Analyze performance degradation
* Understand intermittent failures
* Investigate application crashes
* Perform post-incident reviews
* Identify regression causes
* Prepare an RCA document

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# 📥 Inputs Required

Provide as much context as possible.

## Problem Summary

Describe:

* What happened?
* What was expected?
* What actually occurred?

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## Timeline

Include:

* When did the issue begin?
* Was it after a deployment?
* Was it intermittent or consistent?
* Has it happened before?

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## Environment

Examples:

* Development
* QA
* Staging
* Production

Include:

* OS
* Browser
* Device
* Cloud provider
* Region (if applicable)

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## Technical Context

Provide:

* Technology stack
* Architecture overview
* Recent deployments
* Recent configuration changes
* Relevant code snippets

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## Evidence

Include:

* Error logs
* Stack traces
* Screenshots
* Monitoring graphs
* Metrics
* Console output
* Network traces

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## Reproduction Steps

If known:

* Steps to reproduce
* Frequency
* Preconditions

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# 🚀 Copy-Paste Prompt