Catalog
concept#Product#Delivery#Governance#Software Engineering

Problem Statement

A concise formulation of the business or user problem to be solved, serving as the basis for research, hypotheses, and solution design.

A Problem Statement is a concise, contextualized description of an observed business or user problem serving as the basis for research, hypothesis formulation, and solution design.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Low
  • Organizational
  • Design
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Analytics platforms (e.g., Google Analytics)User research tools (e.g., Hotjar, FullStory)Product and roadmap tools (e.g., Jira, Aha!)

Principles & goals

Clarity before scope: A problem statement focuses on a targeted problem.Measurability: Success and evaluation metrics are part of the statement.Stakeholder involvement: Joint formulation creates alignment.
Discovery
Enterprise, Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Incorrect problem assumptions lead to misinvestments.
  • Political interests can skew the statement.
  • Overemphasis on metrics instead of user needs.
  • Use precise, measurable formulations instead of vague statements.
  • Include multiple perspectives to avoid blind spots.
  • Iterate the statement after initial test findings.

I/O & resources

  • Quantitative usage data
  • Qualitative user feedback
  • Business goals and KPIs
  • Formulated problem statement
  • Prioritized hypotheses and metrics
  • Empirical validation plans

Description

A Problem Statement is a concise, contextualized description of an observed business or user problem serving as the basis for research, hypothesis formulation, and solution design. It scopes affected actors, desired outcomes, and measurement criteria, and aligns stakeholders. It reduces risk by clarifying assumptions and guiding discovery decisions.

✔

  • Improved alignment between product, engineering, and business.
  • Reduced risk through explicit assumptions and measurement criteria.
  • Better prioritization of research and development.

✖

  • Can be formulated too narrowly and exclude solution spaces.
  • Requires valid data and stakeholder input; otherwise assumptions are weak.
  • Not all uncertainties can be fully described upfront.

  • Conversion rate

    Share of users performing the desired action; shows direct impact.

  • Abandonment rate

    Percentage of started processes without completion; measures friction.

  • Time-to-first-value

    Time until a user perceives value; relevant for onboarding issues.

Reduce checkout abandonment

Problem Statement: High checkout abandonment due to unclear shipping costs; goal: reduce abandonment by 20%, metric: converting sessions.

Minimize support requests

Problem Statement: Frequent support requests about password recovery; goal: increase self-service rate, metric: tickets per 1,000 users.

Accelerate onboarding

Problem Statement: New users do not reach an aha moment within the first week; goal: shorten time-to-first-value, metric: active users after 7 days.

1

Collect relevant data and feedback sources.

2

Facilitated formulation with stakeholders and users.

3

Define success criteria and validation plans.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Unclear problem definitions lead to repeated refactorings.
  • Missing metric implementation prevents valid validation.
  • Ad-hoc solutions as a consequence of unclear statements.
Unclear data situationConflicting stakeholder goalsLack of measurability
  • A statement that immediately demands a specific implementation.
  • Problem statements without metrics, only warm descriptions.
  • Using it as a pretext for decisions already made.
  • Conflict between strategic goals and short-term KPIs.
  • Too many stakeholders lead to diluted statements.
  • Assumptions get documented as facts.
Facilitation and interviewingBasic data analysisHypothesis formation and experiment design
Clearly defined success criteriaAvailability of relevant usage and measurement dataStakeholder engagement and decision readiness
  • • Time pressure in the discovery cycle
  • • Limited access to user data
  • • Organizational priorities and roadmaps