4 min read
Agreed on the fix, not the problem
Teams that align on a solution before a problem often just build the wrong thing faster.
AI
Sanket Daithankar
Product & Game Designer
I help teams ship products faster, with research backed design that keeps users coming back.
Agreement on the solution is not agreement on the problem
A surprising amount of product work begins with everyone agreeing on the solution before anyone has agreed on the problem. Sometimes deadlines are tight. Sometimes a stakeholder already has a solution in mind. Sometimes everyone assumes they are talking about the same problem when they are not.
Why it keeps happening
I have seen this pattern across teams with great designers, PMs and engineers. It is rarely a capability problem. More often it is a consequence of three things:
Time pressure that rewards starting over understanding
Organisational incentives that measure delivery, not outcomes
The understandable desire to move quickly
The familiar result
Teams move fast. Features get built. Progress gets reported. And months later, people are still asking why the original problem has not gone away. The work was real and the effort was genuine, but it was aimed at a problem nobody had properly defined.
Does AI make this worse?
I wonder if AI makes this more important, not less. As AI makes execution easier, organisations can move faster than ever. But faster execution does not help if we are solving the wrong problem. It may simply help us deliver the wrong thing more efficiently.
Before the next build starts, try asking the team to write the problem in one sentence, independently, without discussing it first. If the sentences differ, you have found the disagreement early, while it is still cheap to fix.
How often do you think teams mistake agreement on a solution for agreement on a problem?
