Requirements, governance and enterprise review
Cause-and-effect (fishbone) diagram
Ishikawa cause-and-effect: one stated effect at the head, possible causes grouped along the bones by category.
fishbone.basic@1New DDN source
Why use it?
Investigations stall when causes are a list; the bones force grouping, and grouping exposes the empty category.
When it helps
Problem analysis: incidents, defects, audit findings — before any corrective action is chosen.
How to read it
- The head is the effect being explained; each bone is a declared cause category, ribs are the candidate causes.
- An empty bone is a finding ("we have no hypothesis here"), not a drawing error.
What you need
- The effect statement
- The cause categories
- The candidate causes per category
Things to check
- Do not draw corrective actions as causes — the diagram explains, it does not prescribe.
- A cause placed on the wrong bone misdirects the investigation; the category is part of the claim.
Scope of this diagram
Declared causes with fishbone layout validation; root-cause truth is established by the investigation, not the diagram.
Work with the converted example
- Open the viewer and select
fishbone. Inspect the rendered view and its source. - Open the designer. Keep the selected profile and inspect its legal palette and property controls.
- Change one displayed title or an appropriate data value. Apply the edit and check the resulting diagram.
- Run the verifier and review its diagnostics before moving complete content into review.
- Download your edited DDN source to retain the change.
The example uses the indentation-based ddn-next-1 dialect. The language guide explains reusable definitions, dotted data rows and explicit property blocks.