Project Problem solving

I am going to talk about some techniques of problem solving today.

There are often many different ideas produced when trying to think of a way to save a problem. We can look at some methods on how to produce ideas and how to use them.

Brainstorming is one of the methods of producing ideas in a group.

A brainstorming session can be structured by going around the room and everyone gives an idea in turns. This way, everybody has an idea to contribute. If someone does not have an idea, they may simply say "pass" and the next person contributes.

An unstructured discussion involves people calling out ideas, but it can become dominant by the more confident people.

It is a good practice for someone writing down the ideas in the exact meaning what the person says. There should also be no comment to an idea until the sharing is over. There also should be no laughter or mocking of any idea as any wrong or not relevant ideas should be discussed once the discussion is over.

In order for a brainstorming session to be effective it is good to follow some helpful principles:

* Clarity. Ask anyone in the group if there is an idea that they do not understand. Sometimes someone has suggested something that is not very clear, and time needs to be taken to ensure that everyone understands every idea that has been submitted.

* Search for similar ideas. The next step is to look through the ideas to see if any are very similar. Sometimes people have said the same thing in two different ways. If this has occurred then eliminate duplicate ideas.

* Reject ideas. The next step can be more difficult to manage, but the group need to be asked if there are any ideas that they think should be rejected. If this is the case, the person who made the suggestion, should be given the opportunity to explain the idea in more detail, and to explain to why the suggestion was made. Care should be taken to respect the person who submitted the idea, and to ensure that they do not feel upset, by the idea being challenged.

* Group the ideas. Once an agreed list of ideas has been reached they need grouping.

The ideas need to be grouped together so that they can be used in an effective way. It is often the case that one person works on each group of ideas, rather than one person trying to address everything. One of the way grouping the ideas is using a fishbone diagram.

In this fishbone diagram, a group have got together to think about reasons for blurry photo. We can see that they have grouped the ideas that have been put forward into four groups: Hardware, Method, Environment and User. On the diagram we see some of specific ideas.

How often have you used brainstorming to solve problem?

Chances are that you have used it at least once, even if you didn't realise it. The brainstorming, however, need to be done correctly to be successful. Be sure to start the process in a structured, analytical way so that you know you have considered the essentials.

It encourages people to think in free and open way with no restrictions. As a result, they often generate more possibilities, than using just a structured approach. Sometimes an individual team member produces more ideas than the group version. This may be, because people feel less inhibited when they are on their own and no worried about other people's opinions, but if brainstorming is done well, you will likely get more ideas. Just don't make your group too big, 5-7 people is best.

You need to find a comfortable and quiet place where you will not be disturbed. Everyone should bring a pen and a notepad but appoint one person to record all of the ideas so everyone can see them, such as on a white board. Explain to the team that they need to come up with as many ideas as possible, without thinking about them too much. You will evaluate them later.

Remember, to define the problem you want to solve and give everyone the time with come up with their ideas. Ask them to share those ideas and use those suggestions to create other ideas. This should be fun and creative time. Be sure to discourage people from criticising or judging one another.

Once the brainstorming session is finished, you will have lots of ideas to work with. Now is the time to evaluate them so that you can find the best solution to the problem. There is lots of analysis and decision making tools to help you to do this.

Mind mapping is an approach similar in many ways to the fishbone diagram.

Mind mapping is a way of representing connected ideas in a picture.

Here, someone has carried out a mind map of empathy. You will see that there are some main ideas (pain, see, think and feel, say & do, hear, gain) and from those main ideas additional ideas have been created. You could also use a mind map to present a personal brainstorm - for example you may use it as away to generate areas to address for your project.

Parento analysis

Quite often you are faced with a long list of ideas, when you have completed a brainstorm, once you have grouped them and you have number of groups, it can be quite difficult to know where to start. One way to prioritise it is to apply Parento rule. The parents rule is that 80% of the problem is the result of 20% of the reasons. If we address the reasons that are causing most of the problem, then we will have most impact.

For example, let us suppose that sales have been dropping in your company. We carry out a survey of customers who purchased, asking them why they do not purchase anymore. We get the following answers with the % figures for each answer:

* Costs too high 80%

* Slow service 75%

* Limited range of product 40%

* Poor selection of products 15%

* Not being sustainable 10%

* Product performs poor 5%

If we want to increase the sales in the company, this survey would suggest that we will have most impact if we lower the costs and improve the speed of service. You will note that this is not exactly 80%, which does not matter. We do not need to be precise about the 80% and 20% - the important message from Parento is that we tackle the issues that having the most impact.

If we had just listed the issues without knowing how many people had raised the issue, we might have tacked thinks which have not made much difference. For example, if we start to use sustainable products or we change the product selection, we will have some impact - but it will be a small impact.

It is important that we address the things that really matter.

This technique might be useful when you carry out the research for your project and make recommendations to actions that could be carried out.

Plus-Minus-Interesting

The purpose of the tool is to highlight the possible risks and benefits of a decision before finally deciding to go ahead with it.

You need to follow the below steps:

1) Create a table with three columns - plus, minus and interesting

2) List all the positive effects of the recommendation that is being suggested in a "plus" column

3) List all the negative effects of the recommendation that is being suggested in the "minus" column

4) List all the implications of the recommendation that is being suggested in the "interesting" column

By doing this, you will probably start to see that the "plus" overweight the minus or vice versa. If this is the case, than it is likely that it will be clearer whether or not the recommendation should proceed.

If this is not clear, however, each of the factors can be assigned a score from 1-10, based on the level of effect it is thought that it will have. The scores than can be totalled to see, whether the recommendation has a strong negative, or strong positive, impact.

If you look at the above example, a person is considering undertaking a new study.

The suggestion from this seems to be that is is a very marginal decision and before we go ahead and follow this recommendation we need to explore the benefits in more details, because the disruption does not seem to be justified from what we have seen.

As you can see, there is number of approaches that can be used for problem solving. We have seen, that there is a need to generate a list of different ideas when solving problem and then look at those ideas and analyse them and prioritise them.