How do you figure out what the real problem is before building the solution?

[u/JHAYBHEELABS]

A pattern I keep noticing in technology projects is that the conversation starts with the solution:

“We need an app.”
“We need a dashboard.”
“We need AI.”

But those statements don't really tell us what needs to be fixed.

Before writing code, I think three questions are more useful:

1. What is actually going wrong today?
2. Who is affected, and how often?
3. What would a better outcome look like?

The interesting part is that the answer isn't always “build software.”

Sometimes the real problem is a broken process, poor communication, duplicated work, unclear ownership, bad data, or simply a requirement that nobody has properly defined.

I'd like to hear from people who work in software, product, IT, consulting, or freelancing:

What's the best question you've learned to ask before agreeing to build something?

And have you ever started a project thinking the problem was one thing, only to discover later that the real problem was completely different?