The difference between a project that delivers value and one that simply ships on time often comes down to a single question asked at the very beginning: what problem are we actually solving?

Yet many projects we encounter skip this step entirely, or treat it as a box-ticking exercise buried in a requirements document nobody reads. The result? Teams building features nobody asked for, solving problems that don't exist, or perhaps worse, addressing symptoms while the real issue remains hidden.

A well-crafted problem statement is more than documentation, it's the north star that keeps everyone aligned when scope creeps, stakeholders disagree and deadlines loom.

Why Problem Statements Get Overlooked

There's a reason problem statements often get short shrift: they tend to feel like bureaucracy when what you really want is to start building. You have a budget, a deadline, and a general sense of what needs to be done - why pause to articulate something everyone already "knows"?

The issue is that what everyone "knows" often differs considerably from person to person. The founder, the developer, and the end user will have different goals from one another. Without a shared articulation of the problem, these misalignments compound over time - only to be discovered when the project is in motion and someone finally says, "Wait, I thought we were building..."

The cost of a vague problem statement isn't visible upfront. It shows up later, in rework, in scope changes, and in products that technically function but miss the mark.

What Makes a Problem Statement Effective

An effective problem statement does several things simultaneously. It identifies who is experiencing the problem, describes what they're struggling with, and explains why it matters. Crucially, it does all this without prescribing a solution.

Consider the difference between these two statements:

"We need a mobile app."

versus

"Our technicians currently spend 40 minutes per job manually logging service data onto three disparate systems. This creates delays in invoicing, increases administrative errors, and frustrates technicians who feel their time is wasted on busywork instead of skilled work."

The first statement is a solution masquerading as a problem, it tells you what someone wants to build but nothing about why. The second gives you something to work with. You understand who's affected, what they're experiencing, and what the consequences are; whether the solution ends up being a new workflow, web system or something else entirely remains open.

A good problem statement constrains the solution space without predetermining it. This distinction matters more than it might seem.

The Anatomy of a Strong Problem Statement

Strong problem statements typically include four components, though they needn't follow a rigid template.

The affected user or stakeholder. Who experiences this problem? Be specific. "Users" is too vague. "Small business owners managing their first hire" gives you something concrete to validate against.

The current situation. What's happening now that's problematic? Describe the reality, not the absence of your imagined solution. "They don't have our software" isn't a problem description - it's circular reasoning.

The impact or consequence. Why does this matter? What happens because of this problem? Quantify where possible, but qualitative impacts matter too. Lost revenue is tangible; lost confidence is harder to measure but equally real.

The context or constraints. What circumstances surround this problem? A problem that only occurs quarterly differs from one that happens daily. A problem affecting your highest-value customers differs from one affecting single users.

You might structure this as a single paragraph or several sentences, the format matters less than the clarity.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Solutioning in disguise. The most frequent error is embedding your preferred solution into the problem statement. "The problem is we don't have automated email sequences" isn't a problem, it's a solution assumption. The actual problem might be "leads go cold because follow-up depends on manual effort, which doesn't happen consistently."

Vagueness that sounds specific. Statements like "users find the process confusing" feel concrete but aren't. Which users? What process? Vague problem statements produce vague solutions.

Assuming you know the problem. Often what stakeholders describe as the problem is actually a symptom, or their interpretation of a problem they haven't directly experienced. "Customers keep asking for feature X" might indicate that feature X is needed; or it might indicate that customers are trying to solve a different problem and assume X is the answer. These are not the same thing.

Conflating multiple problems. Some problem statements try to capture everything at once, becoming unwieldy and impossible to solve coherently. If your statement includes several distinct issues, separate them, then address them individually and prioritise.

Writing the Problem Statement: A Practical Approach

Start with research, by interviewing the people experiencing the problem. Observe their current workflows, review support tickets, complaints and feedback. The problem statement should emerge from evidence and not assumptions.

After writing a first draft, pressure-test it:

• Could someone unfamiliar with this project understand what we're trying to solve?
• Does this statement suggest any particular solution, or does it remain solution-agnostic?
• Can we validate whether this problem actually exists?
• Will we be able to measure whether we've solved it?

If the answer to any of these is no, revise accordingly.

Finally, share it with stakeholders and the people experiencing the problem. Do they recognise their reality in your description? If they push back or seem confused, you've learned something valuable.

Using the Problem Statement Throughout the Project

When features get proposed, ask whether they address the stated problem. When scope discussions happen, return to the problem statement to determine what's essential versus what's nice-to-have. When the project feels lost or unfocused, the problem statement should have the ability to reorient everyone.

This doesn't mean the problem statement can never change, sometimes you learn, mid-project, that you've been solving the wrong problem entirely or that the problem has evolved. It happens. Update the statement and realign the project. What matters is that everyone stays oriented around a shared understanding of what you're actually trying to achieve.

When Problem Statements Go Wrong

Even well-intentioned teams can end up with problem statements that lead them astray.

The politically convenient problem. Sometimes the stated problem reflects what's acceptable to discuss rather than what's actually happening. If the real problem involves organisational dysfunction, teams often contort the problem statement to avoid uncomfortable truths. The result is a project that solves a fictitious problem while the real one remains unaddressed.

The retrospectively invented problem. Occasionally, solutions get decided first - through executive mandate, competitive pressure or an assumption - and the problem statement gets written afterwards to justify the predetermined answer. This inverts the entire purpose and is usually identified by it's suspicious specificity: it describes a problem that only one particular solution could possibly address.

The problem nobody actually has. Founders and product teams sometimes fall in love with problems that feel like they should exist but don't, at least not with sufficient intensity to warrant solving. The problem might be real in a technical sense, but not meaningful enough for anyone to pay for a solution or change their behaviour to adopt one.

Conclusion

The work of defining a problem statement isn't glamorous but it determines whether everything that follows is on track.

Small businesses and resource-constrained teams often feel pressure to skip this step, to move fast and figure things out as they go. Sometimes speed is indeed the priority, but the irony is that careful problem definition usually accelerates the project overall. You spend less time building the wrong thing, less time in circular discussions about scope, and less time discovering fundamental misalignment late in the process.

A clear problem statement won't solve everything, but it will tell you whether you're solving the right thing - and that's where every successful project begins.