discoveryproblem-framing
Frame the core customer problem, evidence, and success hypothesis before solutioning.
When & Why to Use This Skill
This Claude skill empowers Product Managers to rigorously frame customer problems by synthesizing evidence and defining success hypotheses. It streamlines the product discovery phase by transforming raw research into actionable problem statements, evidence-backed insight tables, and clear success metrics, ensuring teams build solutions that truly address user needs.
Use Cases
- Pre-Discovery Planning: Synthesize recent interview transcripts and market research into a structured problem statement to align the team before starting a new initiative.
- Stakeholder Alignment: Generate a comprehensive evidence summary table to justify product direction and resource allocation to executive leadership with high-confidence signals.
- Cross-Functional Kickoffs: Establish a shared success hypothesis including leading indicators and guardrails to ensure design, engineering, and analytics teams are aligned on goals and anti-goals.
- Quarterly Roadmap Validation: Use the repeatable framework to audit proposed features against existing evidence to ensure every item on the backlog solves a validated customer pain point.
| name | discovery.problem_framing |
|---|---|
| phase | discovery |
| description | Planning horizon for the problem framing, such as Q3 or "next release". |
| - name | timeframe |
Purpose
Equip product managers with a repeatable prompt that validates the customer problem, supporting evidence, and desired outcomes before discovery work begins.
Pre-run Checklist
- ✅ Confirm discovery inputs are synthesized from recent research.
- ✅ Align with design and analytics on the persona focus.
- ✅ Clarify any known constraints that must be honored.
Invocation Guidance
codex skills run discovery.problem_framing \
--vars "product={{product}}" \
"segment={{segment}}" \
"evidence_sources={{evidence_sources}}" \
"timeframe={{timeframe}}"
Recommended Input Attachments
- Recent interview transcripts (
research/interviews/*.md). - Market or usage dashboards highlighting severity of the problem.
Claude Workflow Outline
- Restate the core product charter for the provided segment and timeframe.
- Build a concise problem statement that references the evidence sources explicitly.
- Map supporting insights into a table with columns for Source, Key Quote/Signal, Confidence, and Relevance.
- Draft a success hypothesis including leading metrics, anti-goals, and scope boundaries.
- Provide alignment questions to take to partner roles (design, engineering, analytics).
Output Template
## Problem Statement
<2-3 sentence articulation>
## Evidence Summary
| Source | Insight | Confidence | Relevance |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| {{source}} | {{insight}} | {{confidence}} | {{relevance}} |
## Success Hypothesis
- Leading metric:
- Guardrails:
- Key assumptions to validate:
## Next Alignment Questions
1. ...
2. ...
Follow-up Actions
- Capture open questions in your product backlog with owners and due dates.
- Schedule a triad review with design and engineering to refine the hypothesis.
- Update the discovery tracker once alignment is achieved.