4 steps of problem solving for Product Managers
Being a Product Manager has been my aspiration since college days, no matter how challenging. One of the challenges that I face when starting my career as PM in Blibli is problem solving. As PMs, we face problems in day-to-day basis, and we are expected to be the problem solvers. A lot of times, PMs usually jump into the solution without knowing the root cause of the problems. In the beginning of my career as PM, I struggled in solving problems and asked my peers and leaders to know how they solve problems, and they recommended a book about problem solving: Problem Solving 101 by Ken Watanabe.
This book gives me insights on framework to solve problems and case examples. By applying this framework, I can start keeping up and become a better problem solver. I am going to share more about what are the 4 steps Product Managers should have in mind in facing problems:
Step 1: Understanding current situations
As a Product Manager, we monitor data, observe user problems and market situations, brainstorm improvements ideas, and receive issue reports in a daily basis. Problems can come from any of these tasks. In facing said problems, we need to take a step back and see the problem from a bigger point of view so we can understand deeper. To better structure your thoughts, list down the current situation and the goals that we want to achieve clearly to identify the gaps that we need to fill.
For example, we want to make sure our app or website has a better user experience for certain flow, put that as the goal that we want to achieve. Next, identify these things: How is the current user experience? How is the market situations for user experience in that certain flow? What are the gaps from our side? How we close the gaps to reach the goal? After identifying these, we can move on to the next step.
Step 2: Identify the root cause of the problems
After listing the current problem situations, the goals, and knowing the gap, we can list possible root causes of the problem. I often use logic tree framework; it helps me breakdown the problem into smaller pieces of statements.
Start by writing a statement of a problem and then break it down into several components of hypothesis of what causes the problems. From those several hypotheses components, repeat the process until we find enough hypothesis to try out. After we break down problems and list down hypotheses into smaller pieces, we can determine what action items that we can analyze to prove our hypothesis.
Step 3: Develop action items plan
Now that we have hypotheses and information that we want to test to validate the problems, we can prioritize which one we want to validate first. In this step, I often use the Pros and Cons table; it helps to evaluate multiple options and select the best one by weighing the scores. It points out what might be missing and help us to question ourselves when considering the important options. It also helps to reduce some shortcomings of our option.
First, list down the hypothesis we have in step 2 and then make a table of Pros and Cons for each hypothesis. Repeat this step until all the hypothesis pros and cons are listed. Next, score each of the pros and cons by adding weight to each based on their importance. After that, we can calculate the score of each hypothesis to develop priorities. By using this, we know which hypothesis we want to test out first based on the priority and the action plan to execute it.
The action plan can be experiment, A/B testing, or other validation method that you think is most effective to test out the hypothesis. The result will help us find the best approach to solve the problem based on the hypothesis.
Step 4: Execute, evaluate, repeat
Finally, we’re about to execute the experiments to prove the hypothesis. To support that, we also need to monitor the results of the experiments to see if we have significant results. This can help showing if the hypothesis is the right problems and if the solution is effective to solve the problems. If we don’t have the most significant results, we need to repeat the steps to other hypothesis until we find the right hypothesis and approaches to solve the problems.
There are several tools that we can use to monitor experiment results, but mostly in my experiences, we use Google Docs and Google Sheets to process, and analyze the data and for documentation.
Everyone has their own way to solve problems, so these frameworks can be applied for our own practice as daily facing problems. Not only problems as PMs but life problem as well.
“Being a problem solver isn’t just an ability; it’s a whole mind-set, one that drives people to bring out the best in themselves and to shape the world in a positive way.” — Ken Watanabe from Problem Solving 101
So, how do you solve a problem?
If you’re interested in applying for a full-time position or intern, Blibli is currently hiring! Send your resume to recruitment@blibli.com and get the chance to work with our PM and UX team and create our own unique stories.
