Problem Framing
How a problem is framed determines what solutions become visible — and what gets built.
Problems are often framed either too vaguely to act on — or too narrowly to question.
Too broad
“We don’t have good visibility into what’s happening.”
That sounds like a problem.
But what exactly is the problem?
A vague frame does not guide action. It leaves the solution to guesswork.
Too narrow
“We need to build a dashboard.”
Maybe.
But it could also be:
A closed frame does not test the problem. It smuggles in the answer.
A problem frame does more than describe the problem. It shapes what counts as a relevant solution.
Change the frame, and the system you should build may change with it.
A vague frame produces scattered solutions. Too many things remain possible, so action becomes guesswork.
A narrow frame produces premature systems. Useful alternatives are excluded before they are tested.
A misplaced frame makes the wrong things seem important. The system may be well built, but aimed at the wrong target.
The risk is not building poorly. It is building the wrong thing well.
Human intelligence and AI have different sets of strenghts and weaknesses
AI helps explore the space. Human judgment defines the direction.
The process
Before building systems, I work through five framing questions.
Not the visible symptom. The underlying target. What are we really trying to solve?
What is being treated as obvious? What has been accepted too early?
What alternative interpretations exist? What adjacent possibilities have not been considered?
What defines the boundary of this problem? What should remain outside the frame?
Only after the problem is clear can the system become clear. This is where execution begins.
Clarify what is actually being solved before anything is built.
Decide what belongs to software, AI, and human judgment.
Design and implement a system that works in practice.
Most systems underperform because at least one of these steps is wrong.
Good systems do not begin with implementation. They begin by making the right problem visible.
