The question is ridiculous. Ludicrous even. Of course you are! You're six sprints on your way to to your MVP release and you know exactly what you need to deliver. Of course you're solving the right problem.
A few weeks ago I attended the Agile Arizona conference. The first session I attended paid for the entire experience. Actually, it was a bit frustrating to hit the high point in the first breakout. But the talk really moved. me. It was called "Measuring Customer Success" and was delivered by Kalpesh Shaw.
Kalpesh told us the story of a startup product that we later learned was called Embrace. It ends up being a hardware story, but I think the principles and lessons translate directly into the software space as well.
Let me take you to to a small startup in Silicon Valley who wanted to do something about infant mortality. Specifically infant mortality in the third world. And if you really want to get down to it, they wanted to tackle third world infant mortality in babies born prematurely. This is a great and specific problem to solve. And with some capital and innovation, they thought they could make it happen.
Of course the data showed that the best solution for the problem was an incubator. This piece of equipment protects and sustains the prematurely born infant. The challenge? They are expensive.
Of course they succeeded. They came up with a design that cost a fraction of the price that a conventional incubator would charge. It was a wonder of modern engineering design.
While in the trials phase, one of the design team found himself in the situation of use-it-or-lose it vacation. Forced to take some time off, he decided to travel to one of the areas that was a target market for their new incubator. He wanted to see the situation for himself.
Functionally, when he got off the airplane he went directly to a local hospital to talk to the administrator about how they could budget for the new cheaper incubators. He was completely shocked to discover that the hospital already had several of the expensive versions. When he asked why they were having problems with infant mortality, the doctors told him that the families deliver the babies at home and it took too long to get the babies to the incubators in the hospital.
They had been working on the wrong problem. The issue wasn't incubators, it was MOBILE incubators!
The young designer sent back word to the team "We've been working on the wrong problem!!" I give the team credit for not laughing him out of the room. At that point, it would be easy to become so enamored with their solution, that letting it go would have been a hard thing. But they did!
Back to the drawing board and they came up with an incubator with a portable battery that could be delivered to the home of the family before the baby was born. The battery was designed to last until the baby could be delivered to the hospital.
A trip to a test market showed that indeed the incubators were available in the homes of the at-risk babies, but they were unused. The families left them in the corner. It turned out that the electricity in these remote locations was unreliable, and they had no way to recharge the batteries. So they left the incubator sitting in the corner.
Can't rely upon electricity! That was the new learning.
The team was agile and so they adapted to eliminate the battery. They developed a new incubator that would run off of hot water. It had battery support only for the control panel, not any of the warming functions.
The very simple instructions told the user to pour in hot water to a certain point, and then let the mobile incubator to heat to a specific point for ideal operations. A simple thermostat indicator visually displayed the temperature of the incubator and turned green when the correct temperature was achieved. This solution worked. Sort of.
The team received feedback that the incubators were being used, but the mortality rates weren't changing. So they sent out a team member to investigate the problem. After a number of interviews, the researcher learned that the parents of the baby weren't letting the incubators warm to the correct point. Instead they were stopping before ideal temperatures were reached.
This discovery led to some interviews, and through a translator, the team learned that the families thought that "western medicine" was too strong for them. Their way of adapting was to only apply a fraction of the medicine - in this case a fraction of the warming that was needed to save their lives. This behavior was consistent with how they used western drugs - only taking a part of the dosing they were prescribed.
Cultural norms clearly were influencing how the users of the device were applying it to the situation.
The team responded by simplifying the temperature controls to a red/green indicator. Now the families could not see how close they were to the "western medicine" levels that they thought was too strong for them.
This change worked. Babies started arriving at the hospital in the incubators, and were properly warmed. Mortality rates began to drop. The device was on the path to success.
On a visit to one village to observe the new incubators in action, the team member was happy to see that the incubator was used correctly and that the baby was placed inside as instructed. Then the oddest thing happened. All the women in the home, including the mother, sat in a circle around the baby in the incubator and cried. The mother was in obvious distress.
When the team member asked what was going on, they were told that the women did not like that they could not hold the baby. They knew that the infant's life was in danger, but materialistically they wanted to hold and comfort it. The team member was distraught watching the families in such distress. Certainly this was not the intention of the device, to save the baby's life but cause so much anguish for the family.
One more time the call went out "Guys, we're still solving the wrong problem."
One more time the team went back to the drawing pad. All along they thought they where trying to create a device that was focused on one person - the baby. In reality the baby was a part of a faimly and a community - and they had completely ignored that.
They threw out the concept of an incubator that was shaped like a box into which the baby could be placed. The new design specification had an additional requirement that the mother could hold the baby when it was placed in the incubator. The final design looked like a cross between a parka and a sleeping bag. It swaddled the infant, conforming to the baby's body more like clothing than a medical device.
Finally, this was a design that worked. The baby was saved and the mother was able to comfort the infant.
I found this story heart warming and eye-moistening. I love the idea of perseverance. I was impressed by the humility of the team to go back to the drawing board so many times. In fact, I was shocked that it could take so many times to get it right.
There is a big lesson here, if we're willing to see it. Too often, we think we know best and in the hubris of our design or engineering chops, we set off on a quest determined by ourselves. In doing so, we institutionalize our own assumptions, biases and ignorance.
Those are strong words, and I meant them that way.
It's easy to push this off on "solutions for developing countries." But that's not a legitimate move. Even in the fully developed communities we serve there is tremendous diversity. To assume that we know everything is also hubristic. We are not our target market. What seems good to us, is not guaranteed to seem good to the people who will end up using what we build.
So when the question comes up, "Are we building the right thing?" Don't white-wash it with "of course we are!" There's a good chance you aren't.