skilld
All skills
deanpeters avatar

/problem-statement

@b68bf96
by Dean Petersdeanpeters/product-manager-skills7.1k stars
851

Write a user-centered problem statement with who is blocked, what they are trying to do, why it matters, and how it feels. Use when framing discovery, prioritization, or a PRD.

Ask your Agent

Use this Skill: https://skilld.dev/gh/deanpeters/product-manager-skills/problem-statement

This session only. Nothing lands on disk.

examplessample.md

≈655 tokens on demand. Your agent reads this file only when SKILL.md points to it.

Problem Statement Examples

Example 1: Slack (Early Problem Statement)

Problem Framing Narrative:

I am: A software developer on a distributed team

  • Working across multiple time zones with teammates I rarely see in person
  • Collaborating on complex technical projects requiring frequent communication
  • Drowning in email threads that are hard to follow and unsearchable

Trying to:

  • Communicate in real-time with my team without losing context or important decisions

But:

  • Email is too slow and threads get buried
  • Skype/IM is ephemeral—conversations disappear and can't be searched later
  • Important decisions get lost, forcing me to re-ask questions or hunt through old messages

Because:

  • No tool combines real-time chat with persistent, searchable history

Which makes me feel:

  • Frustrated, inefficient, and disconnected from my team

Context & Constraints:

  • Distributed teams across time zones
  • Need for asynchronous + synchronous communication
  • Must integrate with dev tools (GitHub, Jira, CI/CD)

Final Problem Statement: "Distributed software teams need a way to communicate in real-time with persistent, searchable history because email is too slow and IM is ephemeral, which causes lost context and repeated questions."

Example 2: Bad Problem Statement (Solution in Disguise)

Problem Framing Narrative:

I am: A product manager

Trying to:

  • Use AI-powered analytics

But:

  • We don't have AI features

Because:

  • Our competitors do

Which makes me feel:

  • Behind the times

Final Problem Statement: "We need AI-powered analytics to compete."

Why this fails:

  • "Trying to" is a solution, not an outcome
  • "But" is a missing feature, not a barrier
  • "Because" is competitor-driven, not user-driven
  • "Makes me feel" is about the PM, not the user

How to fix it: Reframe from the user's perspective:

I am: A product manager analyzing user behavior across multiple features

Trying to:

  • Identify which user segments are at risk of churning within the next 30 days

But:

  • Current analytics require manual SQL queries and hours of data wrangling
  • By the time I identify at-risk users, many have already churned

Because:

  • Our analytics tools don't surface predictive insights automatically

Which makes me feel:

  • Reactive instead of proactive, and like I'm failing to retain customers

Final Problem Statement: "Product managers need a way to proactively identify at-risk users before they churn because current analytics are manual and slow, which causes missed retention opportunities."

Source: SKILL.md on GitHub

Third-party checks

1 warning17d5 checks · Risk SAFE
  • Gen Agent Trust Hub17d

    The skill provides a framework for generating user-centered problem statements based on provided personas and pain points. It is safe for its intended use, containing only documentation and templates, but it presents a surface for indirect prompt injection by processing user-provided context without explicit boundary markers or sanitization.

  • Socket17d

    No alerts

  • Snyk17d

    Risk: LOW · No issues

  • Runlayer7mo

    3/3 files flagged

  • ZeroLeaks5mo

    Score: 93/100 · 2 sections analyzed

Provenance

Signed by skilld at b68bf96. This ties the file your Agent reads to that commit on GitHub. It does not review the instructions.

Last checked against GitHub last month.

Activeupdated 2 months ago

Capability

argument-hint
[user and their struggle]
type
component
theme
discovery-research
Other metadata
intent
Articulate a problem from the user's perspective using an empathy-driven framework that captures who they are, what they're trying to do, what's blocking them, why, and how it makes them feel. Use this to align stakeholders on the problem before jumping to solutions, and to frame product work around user outcomes rather than feature requests.
best_for
[
  "Framing a problem before anyone proposes a solution",
  "Getting a team to agree on who is blocked and why it matters",
  "Turning a vague complaint into something a team can act on"
]
scenarios
[
  "The team keeps jumping to solutions and we've never written down the actual problem",
  "I need a crisp problem statement for a PRD that a skeptical exec will read"
]
estimated_time
10-20 min

README badge

README badge for deanpeters/product-manager-skills/problem-statement