It sometimes feels like the business world is addicted to “solutions”. Projects are initiated to implement solutions, and teams are mobilised to deliver them. Yet, without a thorough understanding of the problem or opportunity that these ‘solutions’ are aiming to address, can we ever truly know whether we are successful? Throw in a complex stakeholder landscape where different stakeholders have very different perspectives on the problem situation and we have a perfect storm. It is easy to get in an iterative doom-loop where we keep iteratively altering the ‘solution’ but never actually meet the business need… This can be avoided with robust pre-project problem analysis. In this presentation, you will hear a concise description of a select few practical techniques that can be used to explore and define problems early in the business change lifecycle. With a better understanding of problems, we are much more likely to be able to solve them. During the presentation you will hear about techniques for: - Exploring ‘messy’ problem situations - Understanding different stakeholder perspectives - Defining what ‘success’ looks like in the context of a problem solving situation