Wicked Problems Defined

Wicked problems are those that don't have a single right answer, and are typically associated with "social" situations. Wicked problems combined with complex social situation can lead to other issues that need to be used in parallel with InnovationWorks, but here we concentrate on wicked problems.

With the exception of exam questions many of today's projects involve some degree of "wickedness". To know what we mean by "wickedness" then we should look at how Horst Rittel defined "wicked problems". Rittel defined wicked problems as having all or some of these properties:
  • You don't (fully?) understand the problem until you've developed a solution
  • There is no stopping rule (there's always a better solution if you have unlimited resources)
  • There is no right or wrong answer
  • Wicked problems are unique and novel (they may appear the same but small changes make everything different, like every project)
  • Solutions to wicked problems are one-shot; the solution redefines the problem
  • There are no given alternatives; solution A does not automatically define the alternative solution B.
What features to include in a product is a wicked problem. Looking at the list above we can ask:
  • Will the feature flop or redefine the standard in the marketplace?
  • When is the feature good enough, considering the time and cost constraint?
  • No amount of market research can ensure that the feature will be accepted in the marketplace
  • Even with several successful products without this feature the new one could be seen as an admission of poor performance in previous ones
  • When the product is available with this feature, another novel feature may appear as the 'must have' for the next generation of the product
  • Implementing the feature may require trade-offs in weight, size, power consumption, etc., which can be 'solved' in many ways.

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