Well, yesterday i had a chance to meet with my friends acquaintances and we talked about some things which related that many people in product development still have misconception about finding that one problem that really solves the problem. He gave me an example and asked with an analogy of “long queue in bus station within peak hours” with several circumstances such as uncertainty when the bus will come, how packed the bus will be filled with people and asked to me what can we do. At first glance, i tried to answer him with “the experience that i have during work in current company”, i deliberately answers to him how might we reduce queue in bus station during peak hours
But he’s instanly questioning to my answer: are you sure that’s a problem that you want to solve?
And then, he tried to explain further and tried to rethink again, whether it was just an “observation problem” or indeed a “problem”. So, we dive deeper by considering the 2 potentials that cause it to be the source of the “problem”, if we try to see in the bigger picture: the “long queue” that occurs is actually a reciprocal problem and also the implications of several other factors, such as:
- the available buses are indeed few
- or, the buses available during peak hours are indeed on their way
These two factors are what i actually haven’t think about when answering the question. From here, we can take a small hypothesis: (1) the passengers are indeed accustomed to the long bus because they already know that the bus capacity is small, (2) or those passengers can endure the long queue since they know that it’s peak hour, (3) and lastly, what’s the effect that causing from the “long queue”?
Based on my friend’s explanation above, there are at least 2 fundamental problems that can be converted into a problem statement and these are problems that can possibly be solved:
- first, how might we increase the number of buses serving during peak hours so that more passengers from busy points can be served
- and second, how might we help the passengers to arrive home in a predictable time without having them complain about something that we can’t control
So, from the conversation with my friend acquaintances, i immediately re-thinking back to what is happening in our team right now. I wouldn’t say that everything we do and the problem statement that has been defined together is invalid or a bad problem statement. However, it’s definitely too shallow and if we tend to think deeper and understand even more, probably we will encounter more fundamental problems. and for myself, it seems that i still have some shortcomings regarding in “thinking through” and elaborate furthermore with the “nested questions” that i have
In that conclusion with my friends acquaintances, he said to me that: you (and for us) strongly urge to rethink what’s the actual observation and what’s the actual problem that you need to solve, and he also stated that the quality of the solution you build, articulated based on your ability to pinpoint the actual problem (and don’t write a solution under the disguise of problem statement)