(2022-04-13) Cutler The Problem With Problems

John Cutler: TBM 17/52: The Problem With Problems. People often distinguish between problem solving and problem definition.

I responded:

• Any problem definition is a Model/hypothesis. Thinking In Bets. All Models Are Wrong, But Some Are Useful.
• You probably need a cloud of Problem statements. They won't be MECE.
• Part of evaluating your candidate Problems is guessing at how important/valuable each is to solve. At some point Feasibility of solutions become important.
• But maybe you start by guessing whether a given problem qualifies as a Bottleneck.
• Maybe you put your Problem candidates on a 2D graph
  • low/high importance/value
  • low/high certainty
• Then maybe you start generating solution candidates, each of which might address multiple Problem candidates.
  You spend more of your time on the high/high problems.
• Sometimes discussing/rejecting a Solution helps generate/evaluate Problems.
• There's a good chance your highest Importance Problem is not your Most Certain. So you might want to generate non-building ideas for testing the problem. Sometimes problem interviews can help. But hard to do right...
• Every build-experiment gives feedback on both the Solution design and the Problem framing. It's Wicked.
• This isn't as pretty as an OST.
• And it will probably break your kanban-board.

"The product manager’s responsibility is to define the problem to be solved. The team's responsibility is to solve the problem." There are issues with this. I don’t think the distinction is as helpful as we think.

It’s always a big web of assumptions and hypotheses. It’s a mess. (all models are wrong; thinking in bets)

Not all problems are worth solving. Not all problems are solvable.

An opportunity is a problem worth solving with a feasible path to making some progress (even if that path is all about learning whether the problem actually exists). So the problem isn’t just the problem itself

We fall in love with problems as easily as we fall in love with solutions. Putting pressure on people to “clearly define the problem” can bias people against asking the right questions.

what can you do about all this?

Consider the opportunity framing instead of problem framing.

Whenever possible, “map” opportunities to support shared understanding.