System context
What system are you primarily analyzing? What larger system materially shapes it? What narrow aspect is in focus?
“Mobile checkout, within our direct-to-consumer storefront, focused on payment completion after Tuesday’s release.”
YOUR FIRST DIAGNOSIS
Bring one real outcome.
Choose something current, bounded, and safe to examine: a recurring support escalation, a delayed handoff, an adoption drop, or a process that works unusually well. Your goal is not a perfect answer. It is a more responsible next move.
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Use facts you can inspect.
GOOD FIRST CASE Local, recent, observable, and connected to an action you can test.
WAIT OR ESCALATE High-consequence safety, legal, clinical, or personnel decisions need appropriate experts and governance.
TIMEBOX Give an EDF–0 pass 15 minutes. Expand only if the uncertainty earns more effort.
EDF–0 WORKSHEET
Write the diagnosis in six passes.
Use short, concrete sentences. If you discover that an earlier field was wrong, revise it. That is the framework working.
Outcome and manifestations
What happened? What observable signals show it? Include a time, count, rate, comparison, or direct observation when possible.
“Payment completion fell from 71% to 54%. Failures are concentrated on mobile app version 8.4.”
Origin network and propagation
List at least two plausible contributors. For each, trace how its effect could reach the outcome.
“SDK timeout → automatic retry → duplicate request lock → failed payment. Competing read: issuer outage → authorization failure.”
Evidence, contradiction, and confidence
What supports each path? What contradicts it? What source produced the evidence? What remains unknown?
“Logs show retry locks only on 8.4. Issuer failures are stable. Medium–high qualitative confidence; device-specific behavior remains unknown.”
Control points and ranking
List candidate interventions. Compare them heuristically by influence, controllability, cost, reversibility, speed, and confidence. EDF does not yet have validated numerical weights for this ranking.
“1. Disable automatic retry. 2. Roll back SDK. 3. Change lock behavior. Retry disable ranks first: fast, reversible, and specific to the modeled path.”
Sufficiency and next responsible action
Do you know enough to act, investigate, or reframe? State what will happen next and what result would support the model.
“Sufficient to disable retry for 10% of traffic. If lock errors and abandonment fall together, expand; otherwise restore and investigate.”
THE HANDOFF
Diagnosis is not the decision.
EDF clarifies reality and identifies leverage. Your decision process still has to evaluate options, tradeoffs, ethics, resources, and risk. After execution, return to EDF and ask whether the system changed as expected.
UNDERSTAND→DECIDE→COMMIT→EXECUTE→UNDERSTAND AGAIN
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