About 5xWhys

Built for teams who ask “Why?” — and mean it.

5xWhys is an independent library of root cause analysis tools and guides. One practitioner, 10+ years in operations and quality consulting, zero VC money, zero signup walls. Everything here exists because someone needed it on a Tuesday and couldn’t find a decent version online.

8live tools
70in-depth articles
$0VC funding
1solo operator

Why this site exists

I love the 5 Whys method. It’s simple, it’s teachable in ten minutes, and when done well it cuts through noise faster than any other problem-solving technique I’ve seen.

It’s also, in practice, done badly almost everywhere. Teams stop at symptoms. They blame people instead of processes. They skip straight to solutions they already wanted to implement. They ask “Why?” four times, run out of steam, and call it done.

The software market has made this worse. Most RCA tools are locked behind enterprise platforms that cost thousands per year, or they’re dressed-up text boxes that ask “Why?” five times and call it a day. Neither of them teaches you to think more clearly.

So I built the tool I wanted — guided, opinionated, fast, honest — and then I kept adding the things I wanted next to it.

Every tool on this site is shaped by real consulting engagements, real shop-floor post-mortems, real operating-room near-miss reviews. Every article is written from practice, not from a content calendar. When a worked example shows specific numbers, those are numbers I or someone I worked with generated in a real project.

Four principles

Not negotiable, and not up for redesign at the next board meeting — because there is no board.

01

No signup, ever

The fastest way to ruin a tool that’s supposed to help you think is to make you create an account first. You open the tool, it works, you leave. That’s the entire user journey.

02

Your data stays yours

Your problem descriptions, diagrams, and analyses never leave your browser. Nothing is stored on a server I run. I don’t even want that data — it would just be one more liability.

03

Practitioner-written, not AI-generated

Articles are written by a human with domain experience and AI-assisted editing — not AI-drafted slop rewritten by a human. Every worked example is real. Every rubric has been used in a real project.

04

Ship when it’s actually useful

No VC money means no growth pressure means no feature velocity theatre. Tools ship when they genuinely help a team solve a real problem — not when a sprint ends.

The current library

Everything below is live, free, and usable from any browser. All articles link to the matching tool, and vice versa.

70

Articles & guides

  • Seven pillar method guides (5 Whys, Fishbone, FMEA, Pareto, 8D, A3, RCA)
  • Industry-specific case studies (healthcare, software, automotive, aerospace, food)
  • Side-by-side comparisons and decision frameworks
  • Full index at /articles/

23

Curated books

  • Foundational texts on Lean and Six Sigma
  • Toyota Production System reading list
  • Quality-tool references (Ishikawa, Juran, Deming)
  • Full list at /articles/rca/books/

One person, ten-plus years.

I’m a solo operator with a decade-plus of operations and quality consulting across three worlds: regulated manufacturing, healthcare operations, and SaaS reliability. The thread across all three is the same — teams with real problems, real time pressure, and not enough structured methods for diagnosing what actually went wrong.

Root cause analysis sits at the centre of that. Done well, it cuts weeks off an investigation. Done badly, it gets the wrong person fired. The tools and articles here are my attempt to make “done well” accessible to any team with a browser tab.

If you want to talk — feature requests, article suggestions, or consulting inquiries — the contact page is the fastest route.

Related resources

Dates are real estimates, not marketing. If something slips, it slipped because it wasn’t ready.

Shipped
Eight live tools & 63 templatesMost recently the 8D Report Generator, the RCA Method Selector and the Cost of Poor Quality Calculator, plus downloadable worksheets for all seven methods in Excel, Word and PDF. The FMEA / RPN Calculator has been live since April.
Launching soon
RCA Facilitator’s Workshop KitThe one paid thing on this site: agendas for 1h / 4h / 8h sessions, matching slide decks, eight facilitator crisis cards, and the pre/post-workshop system — for people who have to run the analysis, not just document it. Join the waitlist and you get it at half price when it opens. No date promised here, because it depends on how many people actually want it.
Planned
PDF export for 5 Whys and FishbonePrint-quality PDFs with the problem statement, full analysis, and timestamp — suitable for audit trails and corrective-action documentation. Today both tools export PNG.
Ongoing
Library expansionFour to six new pages a month, currently weighted toward templates, comparisons and interactive tools rather than more explainer articles. Books list reviewed annually.

Frequently asked questions

Is 5xWhys really free?

Yes. Every tool, article, and template is free to use. No signup, no trial, no freemium tier. The site currently earns nothing — no ad networks, no affiliate commissions, no sponsorships. A paid Workshop Kit is in preparation; everything that is free today stays free.

Who built this?

One person. A solo operator with 10+ years of operations and quality consulting across manufacturing, healthcare operations, and SaaS reliability. No team, no investors, no roadmap pressure — which means the tools only ship when they're actually useful.

Do you collect my data?

No. Your problem descriptions, diagrams, and analyses never leave your browser. Everything is stored in localStorage. The only third-party tool on the site is Google Analytics, for anonymous page-traffic measurement, under consent-mode v2 and declinable.

Is this AI-generated?

The articles are written by a human practitioner with AI-assisted editing — typo correction, tightening, and fact-checking — not AI-drafted. The tools are hand-written JavaScript with no LLM calls. If you see a worked example or a scoring rubric, it comes from real project work, not from a model hallucination.

Can I use the templates at work?

Yes — the free templates are provided under no license restrictions for internal team use. If you re-publish or rebrand them for a product or service you sell, a link back is appreciated but not required.

How can I request a feature or new article?

Use the contact form at /contact/. Real requests from real practitioners get prioritized. Vague feedback like 'add more features' gets filed under encouragement.