A customer problem is a need, obstacle, or desired outcome experienced by someone who uses a product or service. It is a starting point for deciding what to improve—not a request to implement a particular feature. In modernization work, understanding the problem helps teams choose where to focus rather than redesigning a system without knowing what users value. section 8.2.5 section 8.2.7
Different users, different needs
An online food delivery marketplace connects customers and restaurants. Its purposes include helping hungry people find a wide variety of local takeaway food and enabling restaurants to offer an efficient takeaway service. Customers, restaurants, and riders are distinct user groups; naming each group before mapping its needs keeps one group’s perspective from standing in for everyone’s. section 5.2
To make customer problems useful in a modernization discussion:
- Set the scope and identify the people who benefit from what is being mapped, including relevant internal users, customers, or partners. section 5.2
- Articulate each user’s needs, then construct value chains of the components that support them. Place those components on a Wardley Map to discuss risks and opportunities. section 5.6
- Spend time with real users. Customer-support work or doing users’ jobs can deepen empathy where those options are possible. section 8.2.5
Ask users, “What have you given up asking for?” A workaround may hide a persistent problem that no longer appears in requests. Treat interviews as discovery, not as a source of perfect requirements: people may hesitate to raise old concerns or assume earlier constraints still apply. Refine the problem before deciding which modernization change is valuable. section 8.2.7
