How to Conduct a Root Cause Analysis?
Context:
Objective:
Specific Questions:
You are the Growth Lead at a fintech startup based in Gurugram. Over the past quarter, the startup has noticed a decline in user engagement with its investment tracking feature. This trend is alarming, as it threatens customer retention and overall satisfaction. A variety of data have been collected, including user interaction logs, feature usage patterns, customer feedback, and technical performance metrics. As the Growth Lead, you are tasked with guiding the data analyst team through a comprehensive Root Cause Analysis to uncover and address the underlying issues impacting user engagement.
Objective:
Your overarching task is to oversee the RCA process, ensuring the team effectively:
- Determines the relevant data that could illuminate insights into the decline in engagement.
- Conducts Exploratory Data Analysis utilizing the metric hierarchy to pinpoint potential problem areas.
- Generates and prioritizes plausible hypotheses concerning the root causes of the decline.
- Selects and applies the most appropriate statistical techniques to validate these hypotheses.
Specific Questions:
- Identifying Relevant Data: What types of data would you instruct the team to prioritize for analysis to understand the decline in user engagement with the investment tracking feature? Consider aspects like user demographics, interaction logs, feature usage, technical performance, and any external market factors.
- Conducting EDA: Outline a strategy for conducting Exploratory Data Analysis using the metric hierarchy. What primary metrics should be examined, and how should the team drill down to isolate potential areas of concern?
- Generating Hypotheses: What are three plausible hypotheses that could explain the decline in user engagement? Describe the rationale behind each hypothesis and its connection to the data observed.
- Validating Hypotheses: For each hypothesis, suggest the most fitting statistical technique for validation. Explain the suitability of each technique and how it would contribute to testing the hypothesis effectively.