Brainstorm major categories of your process and workflow. Connect them to the backbone, in "ribs". There is no specific number of categories that can be created to describe possible problem areas. See Figure 2 for an example of categorization. It may be helpful to prioritize the categories into most likely, likely, probable, maybe, and not likely. The team may then want to place ideas on category ribs, starting with the most likely category and working down the list. There may be contributing factors that do not fit into a single category. If there is a contributing factor that fits into more than one category, place it in each of the categories being studied. In the end, a big picture may be apparent that can resolve the problem.
Figure 2: Categorization
