What is the best way to scope a problem for analytical skills?

3 How to refine your scope

Once you have scoped your problem using the SMART approach, you may need to refine your scope further to make it more feasible or effective. Refining your scope could involve narrowing or expanding it based on your findings, feedback, or changes in the situation. Prioritization is a great technique for this; rank the aspects of your problem according to their importance, urgency, or impact. Segmentation and comparison can also be helpful; break down the problem into smaller subproblems and compare it with similar or different problems in your field or industry. From here, you can focus on the most relevant or solvable subproblems and combine or integrate those that are interrelated or complementary. Adapting or modifying your scope based on insights and gaps you discover is key.

4 How to validate your scope

After refining your scope, validating it is essential to ensure that it is suitable and achievable for your analysis. Validation involves examining your scope against your problem statement, objectives, data, and stakeholders. You can validate your scope by testing, reviewing, and revising it. Testing requires applying the scope to your data or a sample of it to see if it answers the problem statement and objectives, covers all relevant data or variables, and produces reliable and valid results. As for reviewing, ask for feedback from stakeholders or experts to make sure the scope meets their expectations and needs, addresses their concerns and questions, and respects their constraints and preferences. Finally, revise your scope by making adjustments or corrections based on the testing and reviewing results. This way you can improve the analysis or solution, reduce errors or limitations, and enhance communication or presentation.

5 How to document your scope

Finally, you need to document your scope in order to communicate it clearly and concisely to your audience. To do this, you can use a template or tool to organize and structure the scope. Visuals such as diagrams, charts, tables, or maps can help to show relationships, dependencies, trends, or patterns. Additionally, language should be clear, concise and consistent with the use of bullet points, action verbs and simple sentences. This will help to convey the scope in a direct and precise way while avoiding ambiguity, confusion or repetition.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?