Professional Skills
Solve Problems with Critical Creative Thinking.
Identify: Writing problem statement
Q. Which of the following is a good problem statement?
Ans – Loretta loads her presentation for a virtual meeting that begins in 10 minutes. One
hundred people have logged into the session. Her system crashes.
Q. What helps put together the key facts of the problem, provide a concise, accurate description
of the problem, and clearly articulate what you want to achieve?
Ans - A problem statement
Q. Which of the following is the best way to define a problem?
Ans – A situation that could lead to a negative outcome
Explore: What are the options
Q. True or false: You should go for quantity over quality when brainstorming.
Ans – True.
Q. Which option best describes “The Five Whys” questioning technique?
Ans – Ask "Why?" repeatedly at least five times until you get to the root cause.
Q. What is an informal way for a group to come up with ideas for solving a problem?
Ans – Brainstorming.
Select: What's the best solution?
Q. If time is of essence, who should choose the solution?
Ans – One Person.
Q. Who should choose the solution to Georgia's problem?
Ans – A team that reaches consensus
Q. If buy-in is important, who should choose the solution?
Ans - A team that reaches consensus.
Q. If quality is critical, who should choose the solution?
Ans - One person who consults with advisors and stakeholders
Final Quiz
Q. The Marketing department will be presenting the advertising campaign to the leadership
team. From past experience, the leadership team usually cuts the amount of time for the
presentation. The Marketing department is looking for a creative approach to presenting
their three options for the advertising campaign.
What are some tips for brainstorming a new approach for the meeting?
Ans – All of These
Q. In today's budget meeting, the team was looking for ways to forecast the company's budget.
Next year's budget will be drastically cut, so the team needs to be creative on ways to save.
They are exploring as many ways to reduce the budget as possible. Martina is the IT
Manager and wants to focus only on reducing the spending of the Marketing team. Cutting
Marketing's budget is not an option and is outside of Martina's control. What are some
common mistakes that people might make when looking for solutions?
Ans - All of These
Q. Tim manages a team of network specialists. The team resolves their clients' network-related
issues. Since last week, Tim has been dealing with several issues at work: • The organization
is changing their travel policy effective next quarter. The new policy will lengthen the time to
get travel approval because of an increase in the levels of approval. Tim regularly needs to
send members of his team to other cities on project work, sometimes on short notice. • One
client’s network system is to be upgraded in a month and very few members in the team
know how to work on the new system. • Tim and his team have just found out their office
location is moving in two months. A few people in Tim’s team are upset because this will
mean a longer commute for them.
Which problem should Tim focus on?
Ans - Train team members to work on the client's new system.
Q. Lukas and Maria are business analysts on a product design team. The project manager tasked
them both to design a workflow model to aid communication across the various skills on the
team. After two weeks, Lukas and Maria shared it with the team. The model received poor
feedback from several members of the team, across skills. The project manager has asked
Lukas and Maria to rework the workflow model.
What would you recommend Lukas and Maria do next?
Ans - Invite team members from other skills to brainstorm with them to come up with ideas for
multiple workflow model options.
Q. Calvin leads the expense reporting team. He has introduced a new format for the team's
weekly report that provides all the specific details the team requires, such as expense type
and exception factors. Previously, the team had to pull that information from multiple
sources. Calvin feels the new report will reduce the effort for his team. However, Gina tells
him that she's struggling to work with this new report because she finds it confusing.
What should Calvin do?
Ans - He should ask Gina to explain why she finds the new report challenging.
Q. Tasha manages teams that handle various technologies. She needs to present project updates
to the leadership team every Friday evening. She asked all the teams working on the project
to send their weekly status reports by the end of every Thursday. It's Friday morning and she
has not yet received the Database team's report. When she checks with them, they inform
her that they had to handle a high-priority issue and have not worked on the status report.
Which would be a good problem statement to describe Tasha’s situation?
Ans - Tasha needs to present updates from all project teams to the leadership every Friday
evening. She asked all the teams involved to send in their status reports by the end of
Thursday. It's Friday morning and the Database team's report is not ready.
Q. Andres is the head of the IT department. He received a request to find a new instant
messaging platform. He is already aware of the various types of tools available. However, the
costs and licenses are very different for the three solutions he likes best. Who should choose
the new solution?
Ans - One person – Andres should make the decision by himself.
Q. You oversee organizing a meeting with the design team. They are scheduled to meet face-to-
face for two weeks in a different city. You completed all the arrangements for the meeting,
including hotel and flight bookings. You just learned that the city where you plan to meet is
experiencing political unrest and will not be safe. There is no update on when the situation
will be under control. Which solution is an adaptive solution for the event?
Ans – You can ensure that all activities are scheduled inside the hotel. That way the team
members will not need to go outside and compromise their safety. This does not fix the real
problem of safety but definitely reduces the danger.
Q. Alberto's team makes precision parts for a new government project. The parts are for a new
aircraft that will be an important part of his company's future sales. Carlos is his lead
engineer and has found an issue. Carlos is having quality issues with the metal used in the
specifications. Fortunately, there is time to investigate the problem.
What is the best way for Alberto to choose a solution for this quality problem?
Ans - Alberto should consult with the client, advisors, and stakeholders before choosing the right
solution.
Q. Alicia is the project manager that works on the Spanish Telecom project. Recently, the client
sent a request for a custom cloud solution. The typical development time for this kind of
solution is 10 days, but the client needs it in a week. Spanish Telecom is a long-term client.
Alicia wants to please the client but, she does not want to compromise on quality. She would
have liked to discuss the issue with her manager, Robin. But Robin is away on vacation for
two weeks. The only way Alicia can meet the client’s timeline without affecting the quality is
by expediting the testing process. She will need to ask the testing team to prioritize this task
and reschedule all other activities.
In such a scenario, how should Alicia go about resolving the problem?
Ans – Alicia should explain the situation to the testing team and move ahead after getting
agreement and buy-in from them.
