To loose sight of the problem your trying to solve is the single worst thing you could do during the Product Development process. It’s not hard to see the reason why it ends up being so. As the Product Strategy crafted during strategy meetings starts the morphosis into a tangible product pressures from the market, technology limitations and not to forget “internal preferences” start to emerge – all shaping the products at its various stages of development.

It’s not unusual to sit in the meeting with a discussion of the solution and identifying the pros and cons of it. However, what is often missed in this meeting is the scant understanding of the Problem for which the solution is being sought. It’s not to say that the solution under discussion might not be a good solution to the problem but not enough emphasis on the problem often results in dumbing down of the solution to just one alternative.

I was in a meeting recently with individuals from the sales staff who requested that perhaps we should just disable functionality on some options within the product to support the pricing changes that they had in mind. No harm intended, its a perfectly normal request. If they had asked this to a developer he would have perhaps left the meeting and started implementing it already !   However, disabling functionality is just one of the possible solution to the problem. Sales could certainly have an opinion on how the problem could be solved. However,  to discuss it as if it is the only solution resorts to dumbing down of the solution finding process. Furthermore, it stops exploration of other possible solutions from the participants as they do not get a deeper appreciation of the problem for which the solution is being discussed.

So, next time when your in a meeting when a new functionality is being proposed and all everyone is doing is talking about the solution, request everyone to take a step back and let the business do most of the talking about the problem that “they need a solution for” and leave the discussion about the “solution” to people whose job it is to find the solution – product designer, business analysts and technologists.