Who What Where When

Who, What, When, Where is best to use to find out what the different questions are surrounding a topic or problem. It helps uncover problems that are underlying or associated with the main problem statement. It also helps transfer the responsibility of asking the right questions for the entire sprint team.

Requirements

• Estimated time needed: up to 30 minutes
• Team: Facilitator, Note-taker, Stakeholders

Why should we do this exercise?

This exercise helps us to identify causes, assumptions we are making that need to be validated and other problems that contribute to our main problem statement. Having an accurate and well thought-out problem statement is essential to build a product that solves the problem well and succinctly.

Instructions

1. Divide a section of your shared art board or Miro board into four sections. Give each a title of Who, What, When, and Where.
2. Start with Who. Each player should write down as many questions starting with “Who” related to the problem we want to solve. e.g. “Who spends hours manually manipulating data from one format to another?” “Who receives gifts they don’t want on their birthday?”
3. Post all the questions under the who section of the board. As a team try to group similar questions together.
4. Have Product Owner, Facilitator or an informed team mate answer the questions (if they can), mark them later for further research (if they cannot) or reword them as an assumption that needs testing (if they are unsure).
5. Repeat for each of the remaining questions.

Tips

• Continuously look back over the problem statement and read over it throughout the exercise. It can be a helpful reminder of