The cost of recurring human-centric problems in the United States are in the trillions per year. The issues in our Health Care System and in poor software quality are costing the United States over 3 trillion dollars per year, on average. Many organizations are not aware that the hidden costs of documenting, evaluating, and correcting recurring issues can be in the millions of dollars per year…all on overhead.

We at BlueDragon identified the following three major reasons organizations are not preventing recurring complex and wicked problems.

IPS is scalable enough to be used to investigate any issue of any level of significance and complexity, making for a truly graded approach to causal analysis.

There is a great benefit in using one scalable model for different levels of causal analysis: the more it is used, the more proficient the analysts become in identifying the deepest-seated causes for the event. This leads to better corrective actions. 

IPS combines the best features of traditional tools into a single framework and is the most lean, agile, scalable, flexible and accurate method in use at the Department of Energy’s National Laboratories and the Nuclear Weapons Complex. IPS is being adopted as quickly as clients can send their staff through one of our workshops.

The net benefits are clear: Significant cost savings can be realized once BlueDragon IPS has been incorporated into your organization’s Risk Management, Corrective Action Program and Contractor Assurance Systems.  

IPS allows us to identify the deepest-seated causes of an event, issue or negative performance trend with amazing speed and accuracy. The method’s accuracy comes from attacking the problem from multiple perspectives as outlined in the “Anatomy of an Event,” from developing a great understanding of common causes, and by using an improved BlueDragon definition of a “root cause” that comes from three decades of solving complex problems.

IPS guides the causal analysts through the comprehensive process of data analysis, the development of evidence-based lines of inquiry, and the cause and effect analysis using the subject matter expertise of applicable parties. The overall results are outstanding.

Using the BlueDragon IPS, our clients identified the root causes for issues that plagued them for months and years.  

When investigating a complex problem, new information and inputs are coming in on a daily (and sometimes hourly) basis. This requires adjusting timelines, researching requirements, generating new lines of inquiries and engaging different parts of the organization.

IPS is flexible enough to take any new information in stride at any time in the process (even at the final briefing of the executives), providing for a more comprehensive and rigorous investigation with better results. 

To increase efficiency, we incorporated the four values of the Agile Manifesto into the methodology.

For example: Root causes are developed through interactions with subject experts and not through proprietary software; Results are captured in their final format; End-users and process owners are brought in to collaborate in the root cause.

And, there is great flexibility built in to the BlueDragon Framework in that any input or information can be processed any time it comes in.