Planning is an essential part of any journey. In the world of six sigma process improvements, the problem statement guides your actions. It sets your goals for work and ties all of the actions within the organization together.

Even though problem statements are important, many teams don’t know how to write them — or don’t know how to write them well. This guide will show you how to improve your problem statements to drive better results.   

Why Are Problem Statements Important?

In addition to guidance, a problem statement also provides several concrete benefits to your team, from gaining access to resources to building executive support.

A problem statement allows you to lobby for resources around a single idea and build company buy-in with peers and stakeholders, writes Eshna Verma at Simplilearn. While your company may have multiple issues that need to be addressed, the problem statement identifies the primary one that you will focus on. 

“How a problem is framed or described can determine the kinds of options considered to address the problem, stakeholders’ perceptions of its importance and the achievement of the desired solution,” says Paloma Cantero-Gomez, CEO at YouthProAktiv. “Answering to the right problem in the right way thus depends 95% on the correct framing of it.” 

This applies to internal-facing teams trying to improve processes and to customer-facing teams trying to create the right products for their markets. 

Problem statements make it easier for teams to be creative in their solutions too, believes data scientist Rahul Agarwal. He employs the same concept when optimizing code, asking: “How is this code going to be used?” When employees know what the problem is, they can work to find ways to solve it. This empowers employees and takes the pressure off of management to always provide solutions and direct their team members.

A clear problem statement can help you build a team of engaged employees and invested stakeholders to solve the issue.

What Does Your Problem Statement Need?

Even managers who believe in the power of problem statements have a hard time drafting them. While the process seems simple at face value, creating a problem statement requires insight and research to be effective. 

Problem statements are typically made up of three parts: a user, a need and a goal, writes Sarah Gibbons, chief designer at Nielsen Norman Group. The basic form is:

“[A user] needs [need] in order to accomplish [goal].” 

Your problem statement can be very clear and simple, starting out as one or two sentences, but will be backed with data, research and insights into the problem.

With this basic formula, you can add information and arguments in favor of solving your problem. Peter Peterka, a Six Sigma Master Black Belt, emphasizes the importance of facts within your problem statement. 

“Remember, Six Sigma deals in data, and having the facts right there in front will back any information that you will give regarding the issue at hand,” he writes. “Another very important element is specificity; make sure you are being specific in your description of the issue.” 

A vague problem statement won’t let you get to the root of the issue, and clear facts won’t win people over to make a change.

Shona McCombes at Scribbr says problem statements also need to address why something must be solved. What is the purpose of putting time and energy into finding a solution? This will be important in driving stakeholder buy-in — if you can tie facts into the benefits of solving the problem to prove an ROI, then you will be able to win your management team over.  

Most stakeholders and team members won’t read anything beyond the basic problem statement, but you do need insights into how the statement was developed in order to lobby for your cause.

Methods to Develop an Effective Problem Statement

Every team develops their own processes to create effective problem statements. You can choose one of the following methods or develop a hybrid method that works for your team. Each method below is meant to help you identify key problems and discuss them in detail.

Work Through the “Five Whys”

Emily Stevens at CareerFoundry identifies the “five whys” technique to get to the root of the problem. This challenge is to ask why five times to help your team address the source of the issue, rather than a symptom of it. 

For example, let’s say customers have a hard time navigating stores in a franchise. The “five whys” process would look like this:

1. Why can’t customers navigate the stores? They have no direction.

2. Why don’t they have any direction? There is no signage guiding them.

3. Why isn’t there signage in the stores? The franchise locations never received it.

4. Why haven’t the stores received signage? The main office never designed it.

5. Why hasn’t the main office designed signage? A signage section has never been added to the branding guide.

By the time you drill down to the last of five questions, you can direct the design and branding teams to create signage for individual locations to help customers. The problem statement becomes much more concrete and valuable than if you stopped at “customers keep getting lost in our stores.”

Ask “How Might We” Questions

Geunbae Lee, product designer at Facebook, also suggests the “How Might We” (HMW) method for defining problems. This is a great method for group brainstorming. 

Lead with questions that start with “how might we,” and make sure the following query is specific enough to drive ideas and creativity. Using the same example for store signage, a few HMW questions could be:

• How might we make it easier for customers to navigate our stores?

• How might we offer better directions so fewer people get lost?

This allows your team to further identify specific problems that need to be addressed in order to solve the overarching problem. 

Use Empathy During the Research Process

While data and facts are important to identify problems, keep in mind that there are real customers behind those numbers. 

Steven Widen, president of E-Cubed Media Synthesis, highlights empathy as a powerful tool that your team can use to define problem statements. When your team has the emotional intelligence to understand what motivates or frustrates their customers, they can take steps to remedy those problems. The empathy stage occurs as team members analyze data and case studies about customers to better understand them, he adds.

Empathy is particularly important if you are combining design thinking with your existing six sigma methodology, says Saksham Khandelwal, advisor at NTT DATA. “Empathy is the foundation of a human-centered design process, and without empathy-led design thinking principles, it's difficult to form a genuine problem statement,” he writes. 

Observations and conversations (along with your existing data insights) work to show how problems genuinely affect your customers or team members, creating an internal drive for you to fix them. 

Keep Your Product Out of It

As you develop your problem statements, remember that your customers or users are at the heart of your issues. 

Ivan Schneiders, director of experience design at Avanade, proposes a simple rule of thumb for developing problem statements: “If you mention your product, service or solution in the customer problem statement, then it’s probably not a customer problem.” 

He emphasizes that if your product is part of the customer problem, then you have bigger problems. The customer or user problem exists outside of your brand or company — but it is your brand’s job to take steps and solve it.   

The Development of Problem Statements Takes Time

You may be tempted to rush into creating a problem statement based on your gut or a project you want to get done, but this could be a big mistake. 

“Almost every time I coach a team on their problem statement, we spend four times the amount of time on it than they expected, and the problem statement always changes by the time we’re done,” writes lean advisor Jamie Flinchbaugh. It takes time because it’s so important. The problem statement serves as a compass to guide your progress and your investments, and everything you do will tie back to this core idea.

Even recognizing the importance of problem statements, many teams and employees rush through the creation process. Nelson Repenning, associate dean for leadership and special projects at MIT Sloan School of Management, says this is because formulating problem statement does not come naturally. 

Most employees jump into action when faced with a problem: They feel experienced enough to address it and don’t have time for in-depth analysis. As a result, they may only put a band-aid on the situation or may take action on what they think is the problem while ignoring the real issue.

“Rushing into analysis with a vague problem statement is a clear formula for long hours and frustrated customers,” writes Martin Zwilling, founder and CEO at Startup Professionals. “You need clarity around the decision-making criteria and constraints, the time frame required, and an indication of action that will occur when the problem is solved, or not solved.”  

For a great example of the dangers of rushing through problem statement creation, Vivek Siva at Hackerearth points to Juicero. Juicero was a $400 wifi-enabled machine that squeezed juice out of produce packets into a drinking glass. The company raised $120 million in funding without asking whether they were solving the right problem or if the problem was worth solving. As a result, Juicero quickly went under as everyone realized the packets could be squeezed by hand.