XY Problem

October 31, 2015

I’ve been recently re-introduced to the XY Problem, I’m pretty sure it’s been discussed in the Support Driven Slack room in the past too.

The basic gist is this: Many times people ask questions for the solution to their problem (Y) while their problem is actually (X).

The XY Problem site is extremely condescending towards the question asker and not a great way to handle someone asking questions for help.

I find thinking about it has been better for to learn how to ask better questions and realize when I’m falling into a trap of not asking the questions of the problems that I’m running into.

It’s also a good way to rethink how a feature is handled if you find customers asking those types of questions on a specific feature all the time.