Solution Playground
Discovery Technique
When talking about Product Discovery, there are many techniques and tactics you can use. This post will break down the “Solution Playground” technique. You’ll want to create a folder to save this in :)
This technique can help find real opportunities within someone’s suggested solution.
As a product manager, you’re typically told not to jump to solutions and instead figure out the problem first. However, if someone (a customer, a stakeholder, engineer, designer, etc.) jumps to a solution, you can use it to your advantage to help discover what’s really going on. (They may have already thought through a lot of the problem space).
How to execute:
Someone has an idea/solution
When someone jumps to a solution and explains their idea, let them do this and don’t stop them! If you summarize their idea back to them, you will help them feel heard. Tell them something positive about it as well. (It’s easy to point out flaws, try not too!)
Ask questions!
As the conversation flows, use the momentum to unearth what problem or opportunity they are truly solving or reacting to.
Ask indirect questions like:
“Then what happens?”
“When you have the solution you’re referencing, how does this help the [person, customer, product, etc.]?”
“What does this solution enable?”
“Does this impact anything else?”
Ask direct questions like:
“What problem are we solving with this?”
“Why does this matter?”
“Who does this help?”
“What’s the cost of not doing this” ← (One of my favorites because it’s not just about $$, the cost of not doing something could mean XYZ fails, competitor ABC takes marketshare, etc.)
“Have we tried anything similar? Different?”
“If time and money were not a constraint, what would you do?”
Exploratory questions:
“What else have you thought of”? (did they have other ideas before arriving to this one? Why did they think those would not work?
“Why do you think that is?”
“Tell me more about that?”
If something is confusing asking “Can you explain this to me like I’m a 5th grader?” That can help people take it down a notch and put them in the right mindset to speak clearly and concisely.
Label everything
When you think you’ve reached an understanding of the problem, repeat it back to them.
For example:
“It sounds like you want [impact/improvement] to [ABC] without sacrificing [outcomes/results].
“It sounds like you want a [better customer experience] without any [friction].”
“It sounds like you want the car to go faster but not use more gas.”
You can ping pong back and forth for a bit until you both start to agree on understanding and start to hear things like “Yea, that’s it, that’s what I mean!”
Read between the lines
Now that you have asked a bunch of questions, you understand the problem they’re trying to solve for and you understand their idea/solution, it’s time to evaluate everything.
When looking at what you’ve documented;
What patterns are you seeing?
What new questions do you have?
What data do you need that supports the solution and the problem they outlined?
Is this similar to something else? Have we tried solving it this way before?
Is this the right problem to be solving for right now?
Is this problem the actual problem? Or did you discover a more prevalent or separate but related problem?
Are the results/outcomes they were looking for worth it? Is that the right outcome?
Going through this exercise of letting people solution can really help you streamline what they’re actually trying to solve for. Someone may not know how to articulate the problem or pain someone is experiencing but by the end of this exercise, you should be able to communicate it clearly and concise.
Save this to refer back to the next time someone starts going through a solution or idea and feel free to forward to a fellow product manager you think would benefit from this!