Fishbone diagrams show cause and effect.
Also called an Ishikawa diagram. Commonly used as part of defect management to assess for root causes of some deficiency. The diagram appears as a fish skeleton, with the problem to be solved listed at its head at the right and four to eight major categories of potential cause extending to the left. The root causes are listed horiztonally, attached to the relevant category.
Different industries use different high-level categories. Some useful for software engineering might be:
- People
- Process
- Tools/Technology
- Requirements
- Environment
- Management
- Quality