[antiterra]

‘Root cause’ is neither redundant nor simply a ‘corporate buzzword.’ It represents a clear concept of a causal chain with an underlying factor that gates all other contributing causes. The term has been around for a century and ‘root cause analysis’ is a formal construct in a number of professional contexts, including analysis of aviation incidents.

[phkahler]

Except when people use it as a verb as in "we need to root cause this".

[Macha]

It's got a clear brevity win over "we need to look into this to find the root cause" or "we need to perform a root cause analysis on this". This isn't the case for "resources" instead of "people", or deliberate obfuscation like the article's example of "we're happy to provide you with the paperwork to provide to your insurance company" instead of "we only take direct payments" or "your feedback is greatly appreciated" for "no" or "we have a new billing model to suit the next few years of sustainable development" for "we're raising prices"

[pas]

That sounds forced, but might still be better than "we need to do an RCA", because if someone doesn't know what RCA means in that context, then they have to ask.