How we built Dojo Learning - part 3

This is part three of a series of posts about how we built Dojo Learning (see part one and two).

Get to the root of the problem and solve that

Customers are notorious for explaining a feature they want, as opposed to the problem they're trying to solve. It's our job to read into what they're saying, figure out the core problem and solve that. Even our own ideas for features are really just a specific way to solve an underlying problem.

But how do you know you're at the root problem yet? Keep asking questions. Play the five whys game. An excellent indicator you've found the root cause is when the solution to it is so simple you want to smack your forehead for not recognizing it sooner.

I think it was Einstein who had said about his theory of general relativity that he could feel it was right because it was so simple. Occam's razor is a principle that roughly says "all other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

This is true of software especially, and what you'll find is that when you've solved the root problem, it has a domino effect on other feature ideas and solves some of those too.

When you solve the root problem, you'll usually find the solution is so simple and obvious that you wonder why you didn't think of it first. The reason of course is that simplicity is hard, it takes hard work and persistence to drill down that far.

My last startup failed partly because when it began to run into trouble, I didn't take a step back and find the root solution for the problems we had. They seem so simple in hindsight, but at the time I couldn't see them. Instead of making one simple change and saving the business, I watched it crumble right in front of me.

There were several other factors (translation: mistakes I made) which I'll save for another post, but one of the key things was that I didn't dig deep enough to see and solve the root problem. So I know first-hand how important this step is. In many cases, it just means feature-bloat. In mine, it cost me a startup.

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