Cause and Effect (Fishbone) diagram

Cause and effect (fishbone) diagram was introduced by Kaoru Ishikawa, the creator of the diagram, and pioneer of Japanese Quality Management.

Build Diagram

How to use cause and effect diagram in Mind Pad:

1. Download this sample map.

2. Open it in Mind Pad.

Put your data into template:

• "Problem to research" -- the problem you are going to research, for instance, "Bad support response"
• "Factor" - the cause of the problem. For instance, communication problems.
• "Cause" - the part of the "Factor". For instance, on-line support system needed.

3. You can edit existent topics or create new one by selecting parent frame and clicking Insert button on keyboard.

Sample maps

Fishbone Diagram Cause and Effect Diagram represents company quality management process.  Download Balanced Scorecard [10 KB]

Outlined Fishbone Diagram 

1.

Problem Too long "Research > Development > Implementation cycle"

1.2.1.1.

No technical means used for brainstorming

1.2.2.1.

Ineffective researching

1.2.2.2.

Our researchers don't collaborate with each other

1.2.3.1.

Implementation is impossible without additional development

1.2.3.2.

Product design is not really usable

1.2.4.1.

Focus group find a lot of problems with product

1.2.5.1.

People lack some important functions

1.3.1.1.

Product design changes a lot before final version

1.3.2.1.

We are getting bug reports too late

1.3.2.2.

Time-consuming development process

1.3.3.1.

We don't have a quality management

1.3.3.1.1.

Tim, Mary, Peter

Company	AKS-Labs
Date to contact	2004-01-01
Job title	Quality Assurance Group

1.3.3.2.

We should integrate focus groups into development process

1.3.4.1.

We don't learn our mistakes when managing design process