A filled A3: distinguish the symptom from the condition

Steps
1. Define the observed gap and its boundary. In the example, four of ten handovers in one fictional week lack an acceptance owner. Record the ten observations before interpreting the cause.
2. Separate observation from hypothesis. “People do not care” is neither a useful observation nor an established cause. A testable alternative is that the handover form has no owner field and the meeting ends without assigning one.
3. Choose a small countermeasure and a disconfirming check. Trial an owner field in the next ten handovers. If the field is completed but acceptance still stalls, the explanation is incomplete.
4. Name a person to review the trial, its end date and what evidence would change the decision. Leave the result blank until the trial has happened; a planned experiment is not improvement already achieved.

Worked record
Problem boundary: ____________________
Current condition: ____________________
Hypothesis: ____________________
Trial: ____________________
Measures: ____________________
Disconfirming observation: ____________________
Result and next decision: ____________________

Problem boundary: Fictional week; one team; 10 handovers; 4 without an acceptance owner
Current condition: Form has no owner field; assignment step not recorded
Hypothesis: An explicit assignment step may prevent unowned acceptance
Trial: Next 10 handovers: name owner and acceptance criterion before closing
Measures: Count missing owners and count stalled acceptances separately
Disconfirming observation: Owners are named but acceptance still stalls: inspect authority, capacity and criteria
Result and next decision: Not run. Review evidence before retaining or changing the trial.

Do not call “add a field” the root cause. It is a proposed countermeasure linked to one hypothesis. Preserve contradictory observations and ask the people doing the work whether the form represents the actual process. The downloadable card keeps problem, evidence, hypothesis, trial and result in separate boxes.

Lean Enterprise Institute: A3 report — https://www.lean.org/lexicon-terms/a3-report/