Many years ago I participated in the investigation of a couple of industrial accidents, having been trained on how to conduct various methods of causal analysis. The problem-solving techniques I learned have become second nature to me, and I sometimes find myself using one or more of them to solve everyday problems.
One of these techniques is called change analysis, which this Wikipedia article describes as follows:
“An investigation technique often used for problems or accidents. It is based on comparing a situation that does not exhibit the problem to one that does, in order to identify the changes or differences that might explain why the problem occurred.”
This is a simple, yet powerful, tool for solving problems, and I am sharing it with you in case you are not familiar with it. It was brought to my mind when I used it to solve a problem I mentioned to you a couple of days ago. As I thought through the problem, I asked myself “what changes have I made to my site in the past several days?” Then, I just worked my way through the changes and found the one that had caused the problem.
You may very well have used this technique to solve problems in the past. If not, it is a good one to add to your skill set.