Turning a Vague Stakeholder Question into a Measurable Business Case

When a stakeholder brings you a question that is vague or open-ended, how do you work out what business value is actually at stake? Explain the approach you use, and illustrate it with a situation where you applied it. ```hint Find the decision behind the question Before any analysis, ask what the person will do differently depending on the answer. The value usually sits in that decision, not in the question as worded. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "ambiguous question" mean a loosely worded request from a stakeholder, such as "why is this number down?", or an open problem with no stated goal at all? - Should "business value" be limited to revenue and cost, or can it include customer experience, risk and operational outcomes that are harder to put a number on? - Do you want my general method, a real example, or both, and roughly how long should the answer be? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - How the candidate uncovers who is asking, why now, and which decision the answer will inform - How the vague question is broken into specific, testable hypotheses tied to business outcomes - How the value is sized roughly enough to decide whether the work is worth doing at all - How the reframed problem is confirmed with the stakeholder and how success is defined - A concrete example with a clear result, including what was deprioritized or dropped ### Follow-up Questions - What do you do when two stakeholders asking the same vague question want it answered for different reasons? - How do you proceed when the data you need to size the value does not exist yet? - Tell me about a time you concluded a question was not worth answering. How did you tell the person who asked it?