Problem Definition is a deceptively simple task. What at first seems to be the problem is often merely a symptom of a deeper problem. This tool works to both open a problem up, presenting it in a way that can be examined from a number of angles.
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Definition
What is this for?
To stop a team solving the wrong thing quickly. Most projects that go wrong were not badly built, they were aimed at a problem nobody had written down, and the first written version appeared in the retrospective.
A problem statement is worth the hour when more than two people have to agree on what they are doing. It is the artefact that makes disagreement visible early, while disagreement is still cheap. If two people read the same statement and picture different work, you have found something before it cost you a quarter.
Step-by-step guide.
Write who has the problem, in the singular. Not "users", one describable person having a specific bad afternoon. Then what they are trying to do, what stops them, and what it costs when it stops them.
The cost is the part that gets skipped and the part that decides funding. Put a unit on it: hours, missed orders, calls to support, people who leave. Finish with the line that says how you will know the problem is gone, written as something you could measure next quarter. A statement with no such line cannot be closed, only abandoned.
Where it goes wrong.
The solution is smuggled in. "Users have no dashboard" is not a problem, it is a feature request with the serial numbers filed off. The problem underneath is that somebody cannot answer a question they are asked every Monday.
The other failure is a statement so broad it cannot be wrong. If it could be written about any company in your sector, it will not rule anything out, and ruling things out is the only work it does. Read it back and ask what it forbids. If the answer is nothing, keep writing.
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