Root Cause Analysis (RCA) is a structured process to identify root causes of an event that resulted in an undesired outcome. This is typically done as a team to drive to solutions. The RCA process provides you with a way to identify breakdowns in processes and systems that contributed to the event and how to prevent future events. The purpose of an RCA is to find out what happened, why it happened, and determine what changes need to be made.

Typically RCAs result in systems that mitigate the chance the problem repeats itself.

At Amazon, the process is called Correction of Error. It is essentially the same process with a focus on fixing the error by asking the 5 whys.