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What Is Problem Solving in Project Management? Here’s Everything You Need to Know

  • Written by Contributing Writer
  • Updated on August 4, 2023

What Is Problem Solving

In project management , problem-solving is a crucial and necessary skill. Whether you have failed to consider every possible factor impacting a project, a problem arises through no fault of your own, or conditions change that create issues, problems must be addressed promptly to keep projects on track.

In this article, we will define problem-solving and how it impacts projects, provide real-world examples of problem-solving, and give you a structured, step-by-step process to solve problems. We’ll also show you how earning a project management certification can help you gain practical experience in problem-solving methods.

What Is Problem-Solving?

Problem-solving is a process to identify roadblocks or defects that arise during a project. A structured system to define problems, identify root causes, brainstorm and test solutions, and monitor results can affect change to improve performance and overcome challenges.

Effective problem-solving enables teams to deal with uncertainties or gaps in planning to minimize the impact on outcomes.

The Importance of Problem-Solving in Project Management

During a project and operation, problems can arise at any time. You may find that your planning before launching a product, for example, did not consider all the factors that impact results. You may find that you were too optimistic about project timelines, performance, or workforce. Or, as many of us discovered over the past few years, supply chain disruption may make even the best project plans obsolete.

Regardless, your job is identifying, solving, and overcoming these problems. Project managers must be skilled in leading team members through a structured approach to resolving problems.

Proactive problem-solving requires careful consideration of all the variables in a project, including preparation to:

  • Achieve project objectives
  • Address obstacles before they arise
  • Manage project risks and contingency plans
  • Manage communication and collaboration
  • Provide a framework for time and cost management
  • Provide a pathway for continuous improvement

Also Read: 10 Tips on How to Increase Productivity in the Workplace

Problem-Solving Steps in Project Management

While the process you choose to solve problems may vary, here is a seven-step framework many project managers use. This problem-solving method combines primary and secondary problem-solving steps.

#1. Define the Problem

  • Gather data and information from key stakeholders, team members, and project documentation. Include any relevant reporting or data analysis
  • Itemized key details, such as a description of the problem, timelines, outcomes, and impact
  • Frame the issue as a problem statement

A good example of a problem statement might be: An unexpected demand spike has exceeded our current production capacity. How can we still meet customer deadlines for delivery?

#2. Analyze Root Causes

  • Break down issues into smaller components to diagnose bottlenecks or problems
  • Identify the organizational, mechanical, environmental, or operational factors that contribute
  • Distinguish between one-time issues vs. systematic, ongoing areas that need improvement

When analyzing root causes, it’s common to find multiple factors contributing to a problem. As such, it is essential to prioritize issues that have the most significant impact on outcomes.

#3. Brainstorm Potential Solutions

  • Holding specific sessions focused on brainstorming ideas to resolve root causes
  • Build on ideas or suggest combinations or iterations
  • Categorize solutions by types, such as process or input changes, adding additional resources, outsourcing, etc.)

In brainstorming, you should refrain from immediately analyzing suggestions to keep ideas coming.

#4. Evaluate Potential Solutions

  • Reframe the problem and concern for team members, providing a framework for evaluation such as cost, timing, and feasibility
  • With ideas in hand, it is time to evaluate potential solutions. Project managers often employ strategies such as weighted scoring models to rank ideas.
  • Consider the pros and cons in relation to project objectives

As you narrow the list, getting additional insight from subject matter experts to evaluate real-world viability is helpful. For example, if you are proposing a process change in operating a machine, get feedback from skilled operators before implementing changes.

#5. Decide on a Plan of Action

  • Make a decision on which course of action you want to pursue and make sure the solution aligns with your organizational goals
  • Create an action plan to implement the changes, including key milestones
  • Assign project ownership, deadlines, resources, and budgets

Defining what outcomes you need to achieve to declare success is also essential. Are you looking for incremental change or significant improvements, and what timeline are you establishing for measurement?

#6. Implement the Action Plan

  • Communicate the plan with key stakeholders
  • Provide any training associated with the changes
  • Allocate resources necessary for implementation

As part of the action plan, you will also want to detail the measures and monitoring you will put in place to assess process outcomes.

#7. Monitor and Track Results

  • Track solution performance against the action plan and key milestones
  • Solicit feedback from the project team on problem-solving effectiveness
  • Ensure the solution resolves the root cause, creating the desired results without negatively impacting other areas of the operation

You should refine results or start the process over again to increase performance. For example, you may address the root cause but find a need for secondary problem-solving in project management, focusing on other factors.

These problem-solving steps are used repeatedly in lean management and Six Sigma strategies for continuous improvement.

Also Read: 5 Project Management Steps You Need to Know

How Project Management Tools Can Help You in Problem-Solving

Project management software can guide teams through problem-solving, acting as a central repository to provide visibility into the stages of a project.

The best project management software will include the following:

  • Issue tracking to capture problems as they arise
  • Chat and real-time collaboration for discussion and brainstorming
  • Templates for analysis, such as fishbone diagrams
  • Action plans, assigning tasks, ownership, and accountability
  • Dashboards for updates to monitor solutions
  • Reporting on open issues, mitigation, and resolution

Examples of Problem-Solving

Here are some examples of the problem-solving process demonstrating how team members can work through the process to achieve results.

Sign-ups for a New Software Solution Were Well Below First-Month Targets

After analyzing the data, a project team identifies the root cause as inefficient onboarding and account configurations. They then brainstorm solutions. Ideas include re-architecting the software, simplifying onboarding steps, improving the initial training and onboarding process, or applying additional resources to guide customers through the configuration process.

After weighing alternatives, the company invests in streamlining onboarding and developing software to automate configuration.

A Project Was at Risk of Missing a Hard Deadline Due to Supplier Delays

In this case, you already know the root cause: Your supplier cannot deliver the necessary components to complete the project on time. Brainstorming solutions include finding alternative sources for components, considering project redesigns to use different (available) components, negotiating price reductions with customers due to late delivery, or adjusting the scope to complete projects without this component.

After evaluating potential solutions, the project manager might negotiate rush delivery with the original vendor. While this might be more expensive, it enables the business to meet customer deadlines. At the same time, project schedules might be adjusted to account for later-than-expected part delivery.

A Construction Project Is Falling Behind Due to Inclement Weather

Despite months of planning, a major construction project has fallen behind schedule due to bad weather, preventing concrete and masonry work. The problem-solving team brainstorms the problem and evaluates solutions, such as constructing temporary protection from the elements, heating concrete to accelerate curing, and bringing on additional crews once the weather clears.

The project team might decide to focus on tasks not impacted by weather earlier in the process than expected to postpone exterior work until the weather clears.

Also Read: Understanding KPIs in Project Management

Improve Your Problem-Solving and Project Management Skills

This project management course delivered by Simpliearn, in collaboration wiht the University of Massachusetts, can boost your career journey as a project manager. This 24-week online bootcamp aligns with Project Management Institute (PMI) practices, the Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification, and IASSC-Lean Six Sigma.

This program teaches skills such as:

  • Agile management
  • Customer experience design
  • Design thinking
  • Digital transformation
  • Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

You might also like to read:

5 Essential Project Management Steps You Need to Know

Project Management Frameworks and Methodologies Explained

13 Key Project Management Principles and How to Use Them

Project Management Phases: A Full Breakdown

How To Develop a Great Project Management Plan in 2023

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35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems

Problem solving workshop

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All teams and organizations encounter challenges as they grow. There are problems that might occur for teams when it comes to miscommunication or resolving business-critical issues . You may face challenges around growth , design , user engagement, and even team culture and happiness. In short, problem-solving techniques should be part of every team’s skillset.

Problem-solving methods are primarily designed to help a group or team through a process of first identifying problems and challenges , ideating possible solutions , and then evaluating the most suitable .

Finding effective solutions to complex problems isn’t easy, but by using the right process and techniques, you can help your team be more efficient in the process.

So how do you develop strategies that are engaging, and empower your team to solve problems effectively?

In this blog post, we share a series of problem-solving tools you can use in your next workshop or team meeting. You’ll also find some tips for facilitating the process and how to enable others to solve complex problems.

Let’s get started! 

How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

  • Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

  • Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
  • Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve. 

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward. 

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.  

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

to solve a problem a project can use

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

  • Six Thinking Hats
  • Lightning Decision Jam
  • Problem Definition Process
  • Discovery & Action Dialogue
Design Sprint 2.0
  • Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition   #problem solving   #idea generation   #creativity   #online   #remote-friendly   A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys   #hyperisland   #innovation   This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

World Cafe   #hyperisland   #innovation   #issue analysis   World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #action   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology   #action plan   #idea generation   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #large group   #online   #remote-friendly   Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

  • The Creativity Dice
  • Fishbone Analysis
  • Problem Tree
  • SWOT Analysis
  • Agreement-Certainty Matrix
  • The Journalistic Six
  • LEGO Challenge
  • What, So What, Now What?
  • Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It!   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis   #problem solving   ##root cause analysis   #decision making   #online facilitation   A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree   #define intentions   #create   #design   #issue analysis   A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

SWOT analysis   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   #meeting facilitation   The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID   #gamestorming   #project planning   #issue analysis   #problem solving   When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

Speed Boat   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How   #idea generation   #issue analysis   #problem solving   #online   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists  

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists   #vision   #big picture   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

  • Improved Solutions
  • Four-Step Sketch
  • 15% Solutions
  • How-Now-Wow matrix
  • Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin  

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

MindSpin   #teampedia   #idea generation   #problem solving   #action   A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Improved Solutions   #creativity   #thiagi   #problem solving   #action   #team   You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

How-Now-Wow Matrix   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

Dotmocracy   #action   #decision making   #group prioritization   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

  • Check-in/Check-out
  • Doodling Together
  • Show and Tell
  • Constellations
  • Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together  

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Doodling Together   #collaboration   #creativity   #teamwork   #fun   #team   #visual methods   #energiser   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Show and Tell   #gamestorming   #action   #opening   #meeting facilitation   Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Constellations   #trust   #connection   #opening   #coaching   #patterns   #system   Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree   #thiagi   #opening   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

  • One Breath Feedback
  • Who What When Matrix
  • Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space. 

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Who/What/When Matrix   #gamestorming   #action   #project planning   With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Response Cards   #debriefing   #closing   #structured sharing   #questions and answers   #thiagi   #action   It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session  timing   adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore  how to use SessionLab  to design effective problem solving workshops or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

to solve a problem a project can use

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

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thank you very much for these excellent techniques

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Improve Your Projects with Problem Definition and Solution Definition

Jonathan Browne

By: Jonathan Browne | Published on: Feb 22, 2018 | Categories: BrightWork | 0 comments

Improve Your Projects with Problem Definition and Solution Definition

Project Management, in layman’s terms, is how organizations or individuals solve problems. Project Management could essentially be renamed “Problem Solving”, and Project Managers, “Problem Solvers”. Therefore, it is not surprising two key stages in project management are Problem Definition and Solution Definition.

In fact, these steps form part of our  5 success factors for project management improvement .

Click to download your free, no-code SharePoint project management template 

Oftentimes, these two phases of project management become diluted into one, with problems are mixed up with potential solutions. If this happens, issues will arise later in the project.

In this blog post, I will explain these two phases and how they are linked. I have also included some self-assessment questions you can use to gauge your effectiveness in the two stages.

1. Project Problem Definition

Definition: The group or individual understand and can prioritize the current challenges that they require to improve.

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” –  Abraham Lincoln

A project is a plan of work that ideally gets you to the desired outcome. Before a project takes place, you really must think about and define why you are taking on the project. Take Abraham Lincoln’s advice! What are the issues and problems you are having that the project will address?

Most problems are hidden, and it is the symptoms of the problem that you see. It is therefore important to do a proper root cause analysis so that you are not just treating symptoms but curing the condition!

Here at BrightWork our CEO, Eamonn McGuinness, has a simple tip: Ask yourself the five whys. Keep asking the following question of the problem – “But why?” Eventually, you will uncover a solid reason which is the root cause or the condition, not a symptom.

In the 1950s, Toyota Motor Corporation’s pioneer of the Production System, Taiichi Ohno, implemented “kaizen” (a method of continuous improvement). He is said to have instructed his staff to “ask why five times about every matter” as “the root cause of any problem is the key to a lasting solution”.

Another approach for problem definition is the 5W1H approach:  Who, What, Where, When, Why and How.

  • Who does it effect?
  • What happens, what are the symptoms?
  • Where does it happen?
  • When does it happen?
  • Why does it happen?  
  • How does it happen?

Let’s discuss a real-world example.

An engineering team requested the implementation of a new server from their I.T. department. When asked “why” by the project team, they suggested they hoped to increase production speed by up to 40%.

The project team probed further.

One engineer gave an example of a process that takes twice as long on the current server. When asked if server performance was ever considered as a root cause and investigated by support,  the engineers presumed it had but no one knew who had raised a ticket.

The project was already beginning to take on a whole new direction.

Once contacted, the support team investigated, found, and removed a rogue process and the engineering team saw an immediate improvement in performance,  retracting their request for the new server.

Without this step in the definition process, a needless project could have been completed, introducing unnecessary costs for the engineering team. The engineering team also introduced a new process for handling the investigation of anomalies in their production process.

Once the root causes or problems are identified, a decision needs to be made about which problems to address first. The decision-making approach may differ from one company to another for example; simply using your gut , forming a holistic approach, or group consensus .

When final decisions are made, they should be documented and communicated to the entire team so everyone is on the same page. This phase will form the Problem Statement, a clear and short description of the issues that need to be addressed by a problem-solving team.

This should be reviewed by the team before they try to solve any of the project problems.

2. Project Solution Definition

Definition: The group or individual that has an understanding or can recognize workable solutions to the defined problems.

Solution definition should not take place without the completion of the previous step, Problem Definition. Once the team understands the issues they are going to address first, they can then begin to form solutions.

Solution definition is a description of the work package to deliver the product. There are many variables that will impact what solutions or work will be undertaken; time, resources, budget, technology, skills, and even project management maturity.

The chosen solutions inform the “project scope”, the plan of work needed to complete the project. Project scope management ensures the project includes all the work required, and only the work required, to complete the project successfully.

If work outside of the project scope begins to get added, there is a danger of “Scope Creep” – when minor (or what appear to be minor) changes or improvements to a project build up and have a knock-on effect on the time or cost of a project. For some projects, scope creep is inevitable, but it is essential to measure the scope creep , so it can be managed before it becomes detrimental to the project.

Sample Project Scope Statement

Project Name : Lighting Upgrade to LED

Project Sponsor : Charles Money

Project Manager : Caroline Leader

Date of Project Approval : 19th February.

Scope Description : The New York office will have a full upgrade of all ceiling hung lighting. The existing lighting will be decommissioned, recycled and new energy-efficient LED panel lighting installed. Motion sensors will be installed to switch off lighting in rarely used rooms and auto-dimming control units installed on the south-facing elevations reduce unneeded illumination on sunny days.

Project Deliverables :

  • Decommission existing lighting and recycle.
  • Install new wall-hung lighting.
  • Install motion sensors in rarely used rooms.
  • Install auto-dimming control on south-facing elevations.

Acceptance Criteria :

  • Successful implementation of LED ceiling lighting.
  • Successful recycling of old lighting controls.
  • Successful testing of the automated lighting system.
  • Successful reduction in power supply bill in the first month of >10%.

Constraints and Exclusions :

  • Rewiring is excluded.
  • Wall hung lighting is excluded.
  • The facility manager must be available to the installer team while the project is underway.

Assumptions :

  • Budget is approved for €50,000
  • The installer team will be paid in stages as agreed in the contract.
  • All teams will communicate with the facility manager and allow the works to be completed in their areas.

Next Steps: Self-Assessment

Project problem definition.

  • Question 1  – Have you done a root cause analysis or asked the “five whys” of your current project management problems?
  • Question 2  – Have you decided which project management problems to address first and has this been clearly documented and communicated to the wider team?

Project Solution Definition

  • Question 1  – Do you have a clear understanding of what the project scope for the project will be?
  • Question 2 –  Have you recognized that there may be scope creep and come up with a way to manage it?

Image credit 

Jonathan Browne

Jonathan Browne

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A Short Guide to Problem Solving in Project Management (Expert Tips)

A Short Guide to Problem Solving in Project Management (Expert Tips)

Kaji Enamul Islam

One of the foremost skills that makes you a great project manager is problem-solving.

When you are managing your projects, problems are inevitable. As we all have to face the same sort of situations even in our daily life. What makes the difference is knowledge and how efficiently you put in that knowledge to solve a current or impending issue.

Problem-solving is the process of observing what is going on in your environment; identifying things that could be changed or improved. kepner-tregoe

Problem-solving in project management is a strategic process. Hence, you can't achieve that skill overnight. It needs step-by-step learning, adopting a framework to do that, and obviously, maintaining some crucial considerations.

Well, in this short guide, we will show you some of the proven problem-solving methods to follow in project management. After you finish reading, you will be able to understand what are the most essential things you must do, and initiate a roadmap to become an efficient problem solver.

Importance of Problem Solving in Project Management

An illustration demonstrating the importance of problem solving in project management

There are many reasons that you must learn the skill of problem-solving in project management. Before you get on with the top techniques or best practices, let's go through some of the key points that make problem-solving in project management a serious business.

  • Fixing Broken Things in the Process
  • Sort Out the Risks
  • Improving performance
  • Looking for Opportunities

1. Fixing Broken Things in the Process

Problem-solving demands a unique mentality. When you have that in mind, you can easily look after your projects with more intensity. Doing business and managing projects is a simultaneous thing . A well-developed problem-solving structure helps you to point out things that are broken, need improvement, or an update.

2. Sort Out the Risks

Identifying risks is crucial to your projects. The problem-solving framework helps you to understand the current state of your business. With sufficient data, you can easily sort out the risks that can be handled with proper resources.

3. Improving performance

Your projects and the employees are integral, they complement each other to reach a single goal – success and development. So, when you are all up to looking for a reliable solution to your problems, it also makes a good impact on your employees. Eventually, that leads to improving your overall performance.

4. Looking for Opportunities

The more you keep solving problems, you see the newest crack, broken things, and things that need an update. With the same process, you can learn to see the big picture, understand the nature of the big picture, and become capable to convey it as a project manager . Hence, you can sort out the risks and opportunities and the same time.

If you want to manage all your project activities right from your WordPress dashboard check this article on The Beginner’s Guide To WordPress Project Management .

5 Steps to Problem Solving in Project Management You Should Follow

An illustration demonstrating the steps to problem solving in project management

As you already know, problem-solving skills demand a framework. As a project manager, you must streamline the most fitting methods following your expertise and resources. Below, we have sorted a handful of the most proven techniques that can make you a smart professional for problem-solving in project management.

Take a look at them one by one –

  • Defining the Problem is Your First Priority
  • Find Out the Reasons Behind the Problem
  • Generating Ideas for Solutions
  • Select the Most Fitting Solution
  • Taking Action to Solve Your Problems

1. Defining the Problem is Your First Priority

The way you look at a problem, your employees won't. Because, when they see a problem, they want you to solve it for them, as you are the project manager. So, it's important for you to define the problem in the first place. For example, your team is continuously missing deadlines, so it's an issue from their end. To get to a viable solution, you must understand why your team is doing the same mistakes.

Understanding the nature of a problem is possible when you know why something is happening to your project, and why things keep getting in trouble. To figure it out, you can follow the 5W1H approach.

An illustration for defining the problem with 511H method

It means asking these six questions to define a problem in project management –

  • Who   does the problem affect?
  • What are the symptoms of the problem?
  • Where does/ wherein the project did it happen?
  • When does it happen?
  • Why   does the problem take place?
  • How does it happen?

So, asking this question would definitely help you to define your problem when you want to solve it in a smart and impeccable way.

Read more: How to Improve Team Productivity Using WP Project Manager .

2. Find Out the Reasons Behind the Problem

After you understand the nature of a problem, the next necessary step is to find out the reasons behind it and analyze them to the core. It is similar to finding the gap in your workflow and filling them one after another to reach a suitable solution. Therefore, finding reasons won't be hard if you follow a strategic approach.

For example, you can use a Fishbone diagram. It is a famous and useful process to find out the reasons for a problem. Well, what is a Fishbone diagram? Japanese organizational theorist Kaoru Ishikawa created it that is used to categorize the core reasons for a problem in a visual form.

An illustration demonstrating to find out the reasons behind the problem with fishbone diagram

Look above the picture. Suppose, the problem is your website is down. A Fishbone diagram will help you to note down the possible reasons that can cause your website to fall. By maintaining such a visual demonstration , you can get better and more effective regarding your problem-solving in project management.

Here are some unavoidable things – the reasons you note down, they ought to be real. From a lot of possible reasons, your job is to understand the real reasons. It is possible if you go for deep analysis. Hence, to do this, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) would be helpful.

3. Generating Ideas for Solutions

Now that you know which problem you need to solve, and what are the causes, you can go for generating ideas for the right solutions. It is a gradual step of problem-solving in project management. So, in this step, you have more liberty to become creative. The goal of this step is to find out a set of solutions. You need a reserve of solutions or alternative solutions evidently. They help you to reduce your risks. If one solution fails, you may go for an alternative approach.

Hence, you need to do a lot of mind work, research and gather ways to possible solutions. The two best ways of generating ideas are – brainstorming and mind mapping.

Mindtools explains that creative problem-solving works in four steps. They are – clarify, ideate, develop, implement.

An illustration to generating creative ideas with five steps

The clarification stage makes you explore again your vision of the project and the nature of the problems. Then it guides to gathering necessary data and formulating questions. The following steps are all about expanding the framework with all of your understanding, data, resources, and goal to explore ideas, formulate solutions, and create a plan for implementation.

4. Select the Most Fitting Solution

It's not easy to select the right color when your wardrobe is full of similar clothing. But when you are determined, and know the etiquette and dress code of that particular program, your fashion sense lets you choose the color that is most fitting. The same thing always occurs while you are managing any projects and up to solve something.

After you have generated a lot of ideas and formulated a bunch of different solutions, hesitation is inevitable. So as a project manager, your problem-solving skill demands that you select the most useful and easiest way to sort out your trouble.

Well, the best ways to do that is to measure all the solutions, compare them with each other, and consider the following facts –

  • Your expectation and priorities
  • Evaluate all the solutions and measure them
  • Consider your resources
  • Go for the simplest one in the first place

However, you should never stop asking questions. Ask yourself, inspire your pupils working on the project to ask questions. The more question arises, the solution would be more effective and flawless.

5. Taking Action to Solve Your Problems

When you know what is your problem, and which solution you must implement, start right over. It's time to take action. Implementing a solution is the final step. But you must come through all the earlier steps to reach that level. It's an established framework to increase your skill as a problem solver.

Read More: 6 Interesting Project Management Ideas To Follow in 2023 .

How a Project Management Tool Can Help You in Problem-solving

An illustration demonstrating problem solving in project management with a PM tool

In an age of automation, project management becomes easier because of tools that help you create an online database of your employees, clients, accounts, overall projects, etc. PM automation software lets you keep track of every process live, and ease your effort to make better decisions.

For example, if you have a PM automation tool like WP Project Manager , you're problem-solving in project management would be more viable and simple. Here's how –

  • It ensures the best use of your resources and planning
  • Robustly organize and track your projects and tasks
  • Advanced management tool to make your tracking more efficient
  • The tool will intensify your collaborative effort
  • Generate a report so that you can see how your projects going on and what are your lackings

Overall, WP Project Manager has all the features that can make your workflow streamlined. When you see live updates and activities of your projects dashboard (including Kanban board, Gantt Chart, Task list, Calendar, etc), you can easily follow all the problem-solving steps with more efficiency. The job would be easier, nonetheless.

Bonus: A Quick Glimpse of Project Management Best Practices

To excel in project management, it is essential to follow industry best practices.

Here are some key best practices to consider:

  • Define clear project objectives and success criteria at the beginning.
  • Develop a comprehensive project plan that includes a detailed schedule, resource allocation, and risk management strategy.
  • Establish a robust management process that can easily adjust to new changes.
  • Foster a culture of open communication and collaboration throughout the project team.
  • Regularly monitor project progress and key performance indicators.
  • Proactively identify and mitigate project risks.
  • Provide ongoing support and feedback to team members.
  • Continuously learn from past projects and incorporate lessons learned into future projects.

Though it's not mandatory one strategy will work the same way for all industries. But if you have prior ideas, it would be easier for you to make constructive decisions.

By adopting these best practices, project managers can set themselves up for success and increase the likelihood of delivering projects on time and within budget.

Read more: 7 Project Management Strategies To Get Ahead Of The Game (Tips+Tool).

Closing Up for Problem-Solving in Project Management

Most problems are small in the beginning. As a resourceful project manager, your job is to solve them as soon as possible. The more you delay, the bigger the problem would grow. A ship often has many little glitches in the engine or cracks when it is on a long voyage. The smart captain is always in the loop to fix them simultaneously. As a project manager, your job is nothing less than that.

A strategic problem-solving framework will help you to cope with that loop, and a perfect project management automation tool lets you solve your problems faster (don't forget to add up flexibility, affordability, time management, and smartness).

So, here are our final words – keep innovating the newest ways to solve problems in your projects, and don't let your problem grow bigger than you.

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Kaji Enamul Islam

Kaji Enamul Islam

Enamul is an author of fiction, eCommerce, digital business, and WordPress. Addicted to stories, facts, movies, and books. Loves traveling to unusual places.

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Gemini 1.5: Our next-generation model, now available for Private Preview in Google AI Studio

February 15, 2024

to solve a problem a project can use

Last week, we released Gemini 1.0 Ultra in Gemini Advanced. You can try it out now by signing up for a Gemini Advanced subscription . The 1.0 Ultra model, accessible via the Gemini API, has seen a lot of interest and continues to roll out to select developers and partners in Google AI Studio .

Today, we’re also excited to introduce our next-generation Gemini 1.5 model , which uses a new Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) approach to improve efficiency. It routes your request to a group of smaller "expert” neural networks so responses are faster and higher quality.

Developers can sign up for our Private Preview of Gemini 1.5 Pro , our mid-sized multimodal model optimized for scaling across a wide-range of tasks. The model features a new, experimental 1 million token context window, and will be available to try out in  Google AI Studio . Google AI Studio is the fastest way to build with Gemini models and enables developers to easily integrate the Gemini API in their applications. It’s available in 38 languages across 180+ countries and territories .

1,000,000 tokens: Unlocking new use cases for developers

Before today, the largest context window in the world for a publicly available large language model was 200,000 tokens. We’ve been able to significantly increase this — running up to 1 million tokens consistently, achieving the longest context window of any large-scale foundation model. Gemini 1.5 Pro will come with a 128,000 token context window by default, but today’s Private Preview will have access to the experimental 1 million token context window.

We’re excited about the new possibilities that larger context windows enable. You can directly upload large PDFs, code repositories, or even lengthy videos as prompts in Google AI Studio. Gemini 1.5 Pro will then reason across modalities and output text.

Upload multiple files and ask questions We’ve added the ability for developers to upload multiple files, like PDFs, and ask questions in Google AI Studio. The larger context window allows the model to take in more information — making the output more consistent, relevant and useful. With this 1 million token context window, we’ve been able to load in over 700,000 words of text in one go. Gemini 1.5 Pro can find and reason from particular quotes across the Apollo 11 PDF transcript. 
[Video sped up for demo purposes]
Query an entire code repository The large context window also enables a deep analysis of an entire codebase, helping Gemini models grasp complex relationships, patterns, and understanding of code. A developer could upload a new codebase directly from their computer or via Google Drive, and use the model to onboard quickly and gain an understanding of the code. Gemini 1.5 Pro can help developers boost productivity when learning a new codebase.  
Add a full length video Gemini 1.5 Pro can also reason across up to 1 hour of video. When you attach a video, Google AI Studio breaks it down into thousands of frames (without audio), and then you can perform highly sophisticated reasoning and problem-solving tasks since the Gemini models are multimodal. Gemini 1.5 Pro can perform reasoning and problem-solving tasks across video and other visual inputs.  

More ways for developers to build with Gemini models

In addition to bringing you the latest model innovations, we’re also making it easier for you to build with Gemini:

Easy tuning. Provide a set of examples, and you can customize Gemini for your specific needs in minutes from inside Google AI Studio. This feature rolls out in the next few days. 
New developer surfaces . Integrate the Gemini API to build new AI-powered features today with new Firebase Extensions , across your development workspace in Project IDX , or with our newly released Google AI Dart SDK . 
Lower pricing for Gemini 1.0 Pro . We’re also updating the 1.0 Pro model, which offers a good balance of cost and performance for many AI tasks. Today’s stable version is priced 50% less for text inputs and 25% less for outputs than previously announced. The upcoming pay-as-you-go plans for AI Studio are coming soon.

Since December, developers of all sizes have been building with Gemini models, and we’re excited to turn cutting edge research into early developer products in Google AI Studio . Expect some latency in this preview version due to the experimental nature of the large context window feature, but we’re excited to start a phased rollout as we continue to fine-tune the model and get your feedback. We hope you enjoy experimenting with it early on, like we have.

How to Use OpenPubkey to Solve Key Management via SSO

to solve a problem a project can use

Ethan Heilman

to solve a problem a project can use

Jonny Stoten

This post was contributed by  BastionZero .

Giving people the ability to sign messages under their identity is extremely powerful. For instance, this functionality lets you SSH into servers, sign software artifacts, and create end-to-end encrypted communications under your single sign-on (SSO) identity.

The OpenPubkey protocol and open source project brings the power of digital signatures to both people and workloads without adding trusted parties. OpenPubkey is built on the OpenID Connect (OIDC) SSO protocol, which is supported by major identity providers, including Google, Microsoft, Okta, and Facebook. 

This article will explore how OpenPubkey works and look at three use cases in detail.

Banner bastionzero blog how to use openpubkey to solve your key management problems

What can OpenPubkey do?

Public key cryptography was invented in the 1970s and has become the most powerful tool in the security engineering toolbox. It allows anything holding a public key, and its associated signing key, to create a cryptographic identity. This identity is extremely secure because the party cannot only use their signing key to prove they are who they say they are but also sign messages under this identity. 

Servers often authenticate themselves to people using public keys associated with the server’s identity, yet the process rarely works the other way. People rarely authenticate to servers using public keys associated with a person’s identity. Instead, less secure authentication methods are employed, such as authentication secrets stored in cookies, which must be transmitted on every request. Let’s say that Alice wanted to sign the message “Flee at once — all is discovered” under her email address [email protected] . How would she do it? One approach would be for Alice to create a public key (PK) and signing key (SK) and then publish the mapping between her email and the PK. 

This approach has two problems. First, you and everyone verifying this message must trust that the webpage has honestly mapped Alice’s email to her public key and has not maliciously replaced her public key with another key that could be used to impersonate Alice. Second, Alice must now protect and manage the signing key associated with this public key. History has shown that users can be terrible at protecting signing keys. Probably the most famous example is of the man who lost a signing key controlling half a billion dollars worth of Bitcoin. Human authentication on the web was originally supposed to work the same way as server authentication. Much like a certificate authority (CA) issues a certificate to a server, which associates a public key with the server’s identity (`example.com`), the plan was to have a CA issue a client certificate to a person that associates a public key with that person’s identity. These client certificates are still around and are well-used for certain applications, but they never caught on for widespread personal use , likely because of the terrible user experience (UX) of asking people to secure and manage secret signing keys. OpenPubkey addresses both of these problems. It uses your identity provider to perform the mapping between identity and your public key. Because you already trust your identity provider, having your identity provider perform this mapping does not add any new trusted parties. For instance, Alice must already trust her identity provider, Example.com, to manage her identity ( [email protected] ), so it is natural to use Example.com to perform the mapping between Alice’s public key and her Example.com identity ( [email protected] ). Example.com already knows how to authenticate @example.com users, so Alice doesn’t need to set up a new account or create new authentication factors. Second, to solve the problem of lost or stolen signing keys, OpenPubkey public keys and signing keys are ephemeral. That means the signing keys can be deleted and recreated at will. OpenPubkey generates a fresh public key and signing key for a user every time that user authenticates to their identity provider. This approach to making public keys ephemeral removes one of the most significant UX barriers to authenticating people with public keys. It also provides a security win; it creates a much smaller window of exposure if a signing key is stolen, as signing keys can be deleted when the user idles or logs out.

How does OpenPubkey work?

Let’s return to our situation: Alice wants to sign the message “Flee at once — all is discovered” under her identity ( [email protected] ). First, Alice’s computer generates a fresh public key and signing key. Next, she needs her identity provider, Example.com, to associate her identity with this public key. How does OpenPubkey do this? To understand the process, we first need to provide details about how SSO/OpenID Connect works. Example.com, which is the identity provider for @example.com, knows how to check that Alice is really [email protected] . Example.com does this every time Alice signs into Example.com. In OIDC, the identity provider signs a statement, called an ID Token, which roughly says “this is [email protected] ”. Part of the authentication process in OIDC allows the user (or their software) to submit a random value that will be included in the issued ID Token. 

Alice’s OpenPubkey client puts the cryptographic hash of Alice’s public key into this value in her ID Token. Alice’s OpenPubkey client modifies the ID Token into an object called a PK Token, which essentially says: “this is [email protected] and her public key is 0xABCE…“. We’re skipping a few details of OpenPubkey, but this is the basic idea.

Now that Alice has a PK Token signed by Example.com, which binds her public key to her identity, she can sign the statement “Flee at once — all is discovered” and broadcast the message, the signature, and her ID Token. Bob, or anyone else for that matter, can check whether this message is really from [email protected] , by checking that the ID Token is signed by Example.com and then checking that Alice’s signature matches the public key in the ID Token.

OpenPubkey use cases

Now let’s look at OpenPubkey use cases.

OpenPubkey is useful for more than just telling your friends that “Flee at once — all is discovered.” Because most security protocols are built on public key cryptography, OpenPubkey can easily plug human identities into these protocols.

SSH supports the authentication of both machines and users with public keys (also known as SSH keys).  However, these SSH keys are not associated with identities. With an SSH key, you can say “allow root access for key 0xABCD…”, but not “allow root access for [email protected] .” This presents several UX and security problems. As mentioned previously, people struggle with managing their secret signing keys, and SSH is no exception. 

Even more problematic, because public keys are not associated with identities, it is difficult to tell if an SSH key represents a person or machine that should no longer have access. As Tatu Ylonen, the inventor of SSH, writes in his recent paper Challenges in Managing SSH Keys — and a Call for Solutions :

“In analyzing SSH keys for dozens of large enterprises, it has turned out that in many environments 90% of all authorized keys are no longer used. They represent access that was provisioned, but never terminated when the person left or the need for access ceased to exist. Some of the authorized keys are 10-20 years old, and typically about 10% of them grant root access or other privileged access. The vast majority of private user keys found in most environments do not have passphrases.”

OpenPubkey can be used to solve this problem by binding SSH keys to user identities. That way,  the server can check whether the identity ( [email protected] ) is allowed to connect to the server or not. This means that Alice can access her SSH server using SSO; she can log in to Example.com as [email protected] and then gain access to the server as long as her SSO is valid. OpenPubkey authentication can be added to SSH with a small change to the SSH config. No code changes to SSH are required. To try it out, or learn more about how OpenPubkey’s SSH works, see our recent post: How to Use OpenPubkey to SSH Without SSH Keys .

Secure messaging

OpenPubkey can also be used to solve one of the major issues with end-to-end encrypted messaging. Suppose someone sends you a message on a secure messaging app: How do you know they are actually that person? Some secure messaging apps let you look up the public key that is securing your communication, but how do you know that that public key is actually the public key of the person you want to privately communicate with? This connection between public key and identity is the core problem that OpenPubkey solves. With OpenPubkey, Bob can learn the public key for [email protected] by checking an ID Token signed by Example.com, which includes Alice’s public key and her email address. This does involve trusting Example.com, but you generally already have to trust Example.com to SSO @example.com users.

While it’s not discussed here, OpenPubkey does support an optional protocol — the MFA cosigner — which removes the requirement of trusting the identity provider. But even without the MFA cosigner protocol, OpenPubkey provides stronger security for end-to-end encrypted messaging because it allows Bob to learn Alice’s public key directly from Alice’s identity provider.

Signing container images

OpenPubkey is not limited to human use cases. OpenPubkey developers are working on a solution to allow workflows (rather than people) to sign images using GitHub’s identity provider and GitHub Actions. You can learn more about this use case by reading How to Use OpenPubkey with GitHub Actions Workloads .

Help us expand the utility of OpenPubkey

These three use cases should not be seen as the limits of what OpenPubkey can do. This approach is highly flexible and can be used for VPNs, cosigning, container service meshes, cryptocurrencies, web applications, and even physical access. 

We invite anyone who wants to contribute to OpenPubkey to visit and star our GitHub repo . We are building an open and friendly community and welcome pull requests from anyone — see the contribution guidelines to learn more.    

  • Read How to Use OpenPubkey with GitHub Actions Workloads .
  • Read How to use OpenPubkey to SSH Without SSH Keys .
  • Fireside chat — Redefining Security Standards: Identity Providers as Certificate Authorities .
  • Get the latest release of Docker Desktop .
  • Vote on what’s next! Check out our public roadmap .
  • Have questions? The Docker community is here to help .
  • New to Docker? Get started .

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Can BharatGPT solve India’s problems?

“make ai in india, make ai work for india”.

Meet BharatGPT, the latest in India’s AI innovations! Created by a team including Reliance Industries Ltd and top Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), backed by Mukesh Ambani , it is a special computer program that can understand and talk in many Indian languages. It’s a big step for India to use AI to solve problems that are unique to our country.

Let’s explore what BharatGPT is all about and why it’s so important for India’s future in technology.

What is BharatGPT?

BharatGPT is an ambitious AI project, to launch in March, backed by Reliance Industries Ltd and a consortium of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), aimed at developing a large language model (LLM) tailored to the linguistic and cultural diversity of India. The model, named Hanooman, is designed to comprehend and generate text in multiple Indian languages, making it accessible to a wider audience across the country.

Unlike other LLMs, it is uniquely focused on addressing the specific needs of India , spanning various sectors such as healthcare, governance, financial services, and education. Its development involves a collaborative effort between academia, industry, and government entities, leveraging expertise from renowned institutions like the IITs and the resources of Reliance Industries Ltd. Here are the pinpoints of the BharatGPT:

  • Data remains in India.
  • Fine-tuned as per Indian users.
  • BharatGPT is integrated for voice modality in more than 14 Indian languages & 22 languages for text modality.
  • In-line with current government vision of “Make AI in India, Make AI work for India”.
  • Option to add custom knowledge base.
  • Option to integrate with any ERP/CRM system and APIs.
  • Inbuilt payment gateway for real-time transactions.
  • Dialogue/conversational management.
  • Omni-channel, multi-lingual (120+ languages), multi-format (text, voice, video).
  • Generative AI Video, interactive digital twin.
  • Currently available for organizations.

Discover BharatGPT, India's groundbreaking AI project developed by Reliance Industries Ltd and top IITs. Keep reading and explore now!

One notable feature of BharatGPT is its incorporation of speech-to-text capabilities, enhancing accessibility for users who may have limited literacy skills. This functionality aligns with the goal of ensuring inclusivity and reaching a broader user base in a country where linguistic diversity is prevalent.

Furthermore, BharatGPT’s integration with CoRover.ai’s Conversational AI platform extends its utility by offering organizations a comprehensive solution for deploying AI-driven virtual assistants across different communication channels. This integration enhances functionalities such as real-time analytics , speech synthesis , and integrated payment gateways , providing businesses with tools to improve customer engagement and operational efficiency.

In summary, BharatGPT represents a significant advancement in AI technology tailored to the unique needs of India. Its development underscores the importance of localized solutions in addressing the diverse linguistic and cultural landscape of the country, with potential implications for various sectors and industries.

To be honest, I like the idea and here is why

BharatGPT holds immense promise for several reasons:

  • Cultural relevance: BharatGPT is designed to understand and communicate in multiple Indian languages, making it highly relevant for India’s linguistically diverse population. This ensures that more people can access and benefit from AI technology, bridging the digital divide.
  • Tailored solutions: By focusing on sectors like healthcare, governance, financial services, and education, BharatGPT aims to address specific challenges faced by Indians. This targeted approach can lead to the development of solutions that are better suited to the needs of the Indian population.
  • Data sovereignty: With a commitment to keeping data within India, BharatGPT prioritizes data privacy and security. This is crucial for maintaining control over sensitive information and ensuring compliance with local regulations.
  • Government support: It aligns with the Indian government’s vision of promoting indigenous AI development, contributing to the country’s efforts to become a leader in technological innovation.
  • Inclusive accessibility: BharatGPT’s integration of speech-to-text capabilities enhances accessibility for users with limited literacy skills, making AI technology more inclusive and accessible to a wider audience.
  • Collaborative effort: Developed through a partnership between industry leaders like Reliance Industries Ltd and prestigious academic institutions like the IITs, BharatGPT benefits from the collective expertise and resources of diverse stakeholders, fostering collaboration and knowledge exchange.

Overall, BharatGPT has the potential to drive innovation, empower communities, and foster inclusive growth in India, making it a promising initiative in the field of AI.

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  1. What Is Problem Solving in Project Management? Here's Everything You

    | Updated onAugust 4, 2023 In project management, problem-solving is a crucial and necessary skill. Whether you have failed to consider every possible factor impacting a project, a problem arises through no fault of your own, or conditions change that create issues, problems must be addressed promptly to keep projects on track.

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  4. Problem management: 8 steps to better problem solving

    Summary Problem management is an 8 step framework most commonly used by IT teams. You can use problem management to solve for repeating major incidents. By organizing and structuring your problem solving, you can more effectively get to the root cause of high-impact problems—and devise a solution.

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    Solving a problem involves strategically working through every aspect of an issue to reach a solution. First, you need to define the problem. Then, you need to evaluate potential fixes. After that comes implementation, and finally, confirmation that the problem has been resolved. This process can be done individually or as a group.

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    1. Define the problem Diagnose the situation so that your focus is on the problem, not just its symptoms. Helpful problem-solving techniques include using flowcharts to identify the expected steps of a process and cause-and-effect diagrams to define and analyze root causes. The sections below help explain key problem-solving steps.

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    Taking Action to Solve Your Problems. 1. Defining the Problem is Your First Priority. The way you look at a problem, your employees won't. Because, when they see a problem, they want you to solve it for them, as you are the project manager. So, it's important for you to define the problem in the first place.

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