At this stage, you will likely have a fairly good idea of the problem and the facts surrounding it. It is helpful to look at the scope of the problem identified; if it is too narrow, you could run the risk of just fixing a symptom of an underlying problem (the band-aid approach). Or, if you define it too broadly, you could bump into not having sufficient resources to address it effectively.

Two questions suggested by Min Basadur at this stage are the following: “Why?” (i.e. why does it matter?) and “What’s stopping you?” Both these questions can help take a broadly defined problem and narrow it down more helpfully.