Productable's success team details a five-step process to developing a more holistic problem statement
Let's say you're a local government official tasked with overseeing innovation and one of your employees asserts...
"We have a huge problem with traffic in this city."
Another employee comes to you with a similar challenge needing addressed but puts it this way...
"Every workday, in the mornings and evenings (for an average of 2-3 hours per day), young working professionals aged 25–35, with middle-high income, who live in the suburbs and work in our city center corporate office lose time in traffic because there aren’t sufficient alternatives to private transportation. This makes them feel frustrated or bored, as they lose on average 40 hours per month. Currently, they might sign up for Uber and accept rides when they go to work or come back. However, riders will deal with the same challenges with traffic if they were to take a private taxi.”
Which problem statement is more contextually useful for you?
That's right. So how can you help your innovation team develop problem statements more akin to the second version? The first step is to push your innovators to develop a problem statement without mention of a proposed solution to the problem. The second step is to encourage your innovators to address these five prompts when they prepare a problem statement:
1. Problem root
What is the root cause of the problem? If the root cause of poor traffic is inadequate public transportation (which you could argue a layer deeper than this is lack of infrastructure or even lack of government funding), how might we address that problem instead of something like "too many stoplights" or "too many people moving to the city". It's quite common for entrepreneurs to address tangential problems. It's okay if you don't actually solve the root of the problem, but at least try an exercise like an abstraction ladder to unpack each layer of the problem. Maybe you're focusing on the wrong problem!
2. Affected user
Who is directly impacted by the problem? Encourage your innovation team to detail specific demographical information about the person or organization who feels the pain of the problem. Is there a particular age range, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, or even geographical location that better helps you narrow down your affected user? As an innovator, knowing this information (or at least creating a assumptions about the affected user) is necessary prerequisite before facilitating user interviews and doing early stage solution testing.
3. Frequency
How often does the problem happen? Does it happen during a specific time of the day, month, or year? Detailing this information can help leaders understand the scope of problem and to frankly whether its frequent enough to be cause "a little cut" or a "major injury" to the affected user. Simply saying "it happens a lot" is not enough for leaders to confidently invest in a new solution to solve the problem.
4. Emotional & quantifiable impact
What negative implications does this problem collectively have on money, time, resources, and labor for the organization? Push your innovation teams to provide quantifiable proof of how much waste this problem causes. Doing so will help you detail why this problem is actually a problem for the affected user (individual and/or organization).
5. Alternative(s) and their shortcomings
If your innovation team has adequately addressed the above four concepts, then someone has likely attempted to solve this problem in the past. What are the alternative solutions and why haven't they worked?
The Productable team recently facilitated a workshop on problem statements for innovation leaders in the DoD and this is what they said:
"We realistically spend a minimum of 55 person-hours to do what the team did last week with your process in less than 6 person-hours.”
So give this model a try and see if it increases your ability to confidently assess problems! Questions about Productable? Email success@beproductable.com
Nick Chagin - Customer Success & Learning Manager
nick@beproductable.com | https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickchagin/