Problem Scenarios, Use Cases, and Outcomes

Problem Scenarios, Use Cases, and Outcomes are tools in helping define what a product is going to do. You can generate them after surveys with potential customers.

• Problem Scenarios are detailed descriptions of a customer problem. It's a story and perhaps followed by requirements of what the customers need.
• Use cases describe how the customers will use the product, like a list of actions of event steps.
• Outcomes are what customers expect to get out of the product.

These tools rest on the foundation of finding out what the customer wants to "do." They help the team move from the "problem" space to the "solution" space (engineering). It's like algebra linear in that you use a transformation matrix to move from a domain to another.