root cause
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Stands for: root cause analysis (RCA)
The underlying reason a failure happened, beneath its visible symptoms.
Root cause analysis asks "why" past the first answer, techniques like the Five Whys, until you reach the condition that, if fixed, prevents recurrence. The discipline is resisting the tempting symptom-level fix that leaves the real cause in place.
Also known as: rca, root-cause, root cause analysis, five whys