Project Management Tools - Part I - Fishbone Diagram

I am planning to write a series of tool that is used in Project Management. In this article, I will start with the easiest but very powerful tool of project management and quality called Fishbone diagram. Fishbone diagram is also called as “Ishikawa diagram” and “Cause and Effect diagram”

The name Fish Bone is because of the shape in which the diagram is written, the diagram itself
looks like skeleton of a fish, with the main causal categories drawn as "bones" attached to the spine of the fish and effect on the head.

The advantage of Cause & Effect Diagrams is that it helps one think through causes of a problem
thoroughly, thus making us to think of all possible cause for a problem. This might lead to identification of major problems thus helping to identify remedial actions or at the minimum helps in better understanding of the problem. The most obvious advantage is also the fact that is visual and can be easily understood by anyone. This is a powerful tool for discovering all the possible effects for a particular effect.

Causes in a cause & effect diagram are frequently arranged into following major categories. While these categories can be anything, you will often see:

• Manpower, methods, materials, management,measurement and machinery (recommended for manufacturing)
  
• Equipment, policies, procedures, and people (recommended for administration and service).

Steps in CE Diagram

1. Identify the problem
   Note down the problem and identify how and where it occurred. Write the problem
   on in a box on the Right hand side of the paper. Draw a line across the paper
   horizontally from the box.

2. Identify the major factors involved
   Identify the factors that may be reasons for the problem. Draw lines off the
   spine for each factor, and label it. These may be people involved with the
   problem, systems, equipment, materials, external forces, etc. Try to draw out as
   many possible factors as possible. This enables team building activity if the
   team is involved in the process and hence considered as one the good tools for
   team building. Using the 'Fish bone' analogy, the factors you find can be
   though of as the bones of the fish.

3. Identify the possible causes
   For each of the factors considered, brainstorm possible causes of the problem
   that may be related to the factor. Show these as smaller lines coming off the
   'bones' of the fish. Where a cause is large or complex, then it may be best to
   break it down into sub-causes. Show these as lines coming off each cause line.

The above steps would help identify all the causes associated with the problems, further analysis can be done for complex problems and actions taken accordingly.

Conclusion:

1. The key point to note in C&E Diagram is that it helps identify all causes and effects for
   each problem.


2. It helps as a good team building tool


3. C&E Diagram can be drawn for potential problem (Done during initial stages or during quality planning of the project) or during later stages when problems are identified
   (Quality Control )


4. You can create a C&E Metrics assigning numbers to each cause and effect on a scale of 1 to 10 and thus can prioritize the impact.

Note: Attaching a template which can be used as a as a starting point for creating the fish bone diagram.