Issue definition worksheet

Three ways a tidy issue card can mislead

First, pause when the issue is actually a preferred solution. “Build a new dashboard” names an implementation, not the gap or the task that needs investigation. Write who experiences the difficulty, in which situation, and what decision the work should support. Keep the proposed solution available without making it the only acceptable conclusion.

Second, do not compare a baseline with a target until their definitions can match. A seven-day team metric cannot be evaluated using people interviewed or teams that have only had two observation days. Preserve eligibility, the event that counts as activation, the time window, exclusions, and missing data. If these details are absent, confirmation belongs in the issue card.

Third, stop treating the scope box as permission to change anything related to the problem. Dependencies can reveal work outside the agreed boundary. Bring those dependencies back to the decision-maker; do not quietly add billing or permission changes. A short deadline makes this conversation more necessary, not less.

Choose between framing, explanation, and a proposal

The card organizes an investigation that people can agree to. It is a site worksheet, not a validated diagnostic instrument. Use these alternatives when the missing answer belongs elsewhere.

Define the onboarding question without proving its cause

This fictional worked case uses Yunqiao’s supplied packet: a four-week window, one developer, one designer, more than ten requests, a current seven-day activation rate of 30%, and a pilot target of 40%. Twelve people were interviewed; seven did not know where to invite colleagues. Only post-signup onboarding and invitation pages are in scope. Billing, the permission model, and mobile changes are excluded. Cohort sizes, recruitment, and activation-event details are not supplied.

Transcribe the observations before interpreting them. Seven of twelve is a description of these interviewees, not seven teams and not a population estimate. The 30% baseline is a team metric. These different units cannot share a denominator. Feedback makes invitation discoverability a reasonable research direction; it does not show that changing the entry will produce the desired activation gap.

The issue becomes: investigate the administrator’s first invitation task within the permitted pages. A prototype can ask a target administrator to locate and use the entry without coaching, then record where the attempt stops. This is a proposed observation procedure, not an already completed test. Do not replace the original missing sampling details with a convenient new sample description.

Agree a testable card and preserve unfinished observation

The proposed card requests prototype investigation first, with development contingent on findings and the relevant decision. Keep the 40% target labeled as a target. The change from 30% to 40% is 10 percentage points, or about 33.3% relative to 30%, if definitions match. Neither number is a measured improvement. The existing case supplies no later activation result.

Before pilot enrollment, agree cohort eligibility, activation events, exclusions, and how missing records will be handled. A team joining near the end of week four still requires seven full days before its seven-day outcome can be classified. Plan the review after that window or report that cohort as pending. Do not count incomplete observation as failure merely to finish the report on time.

At review, record prototype findings, any approved scope change, actual effort, and each eligible cohort’s complete outcome separately. A more discoverable entry without improved activation would challenge the proposed link and justify investigating other barriers. Keep a change log for the issue statement so later readers can see which conclusion was supported when, rather than retrospectively rewriting the original hypothesis.