Opportunity Framing

Write down what is wrong (or possible), what it costs to leave it, and what success looks like in numbers, before anyone proposes a system, a hire or a project. The result is the page you hand to a decision maker, and the front end of 8.5 Project Charter Template.

Framing before solving is sound practitioner craft with no canonical original and little formal testing: practice, not research. The goal-setting research under the objective step is strong (Locke and Latham). The SMART acronym itself has no theoretical grounding, so it is used here only as a drafting check. Costs and targets are your own estimates unless sourced.

Use it when:

• Someone says "we need a new system/tool/hire" and nobody has written down the problem it solves.
• You must ask for money, time or approval and need a case that holds up to questions.
• A project has started to drift and you suspect people disagree on what it is for.

Skip it when:

• The problem is clear and approved and you need to organize delivery: go to 8.5 Project Charter Template.
• You do not yet know where the problem sits in the process: map it first with 8.1 Process Map (Current State).

The habit this page installs is framing before solving. The logic is simple: a problem defined as a missing solution ("we need a new system") closes off every other answer and hides the outcome you actually want. The SMART part has a mixed pedigree. The acronym comes from a management magazine (Doran, 1981) and has little theoretical or empirical grounding of its own. What is strongly supported is the goal-setting research beneath it: specific goals tend to produce higher performance than vague ones, with documented side effects when goals are overweighted (Locke & Latham, 2002). Use SMART as a drafting discipline, not as a formula where ticking boxes guarantees a good objective.

So the problem statement and the do-nothing question come first and get the most time: if "what happens if we do nothing?" has no convincing answer, no polish will rescue the case. The objective asks for a baseline and a target, because a target without a baseline is a wish.

Describe what is happening and to whom. If your sentence contains "implement", "buy" or "build", it is a solution.

Strong answer: "On Saturdays, visitors to the recycling center wait far longer than on weekdays, cars queue onto the public road, and staff report near-misses." Not: "We need a booking system."

Illustrative example: the municipality, the roles and all figures are made up.

A municipal recycling center in Sweden hears the request "we need a booking system" after a busy summer. The center manager frames the problem first.

Section 1: "On Saturdays, visitors wait far longer than on weekdays, cars queue onto the public road, and staff report near-misses." Doing nothing for a year means more complaints and a safety risk the municipality owns.

Section 2: counted by staff on three Saturdays: about 35 minutes; weekday about 10. Target under 15.

Section 3: "Cut the average Saturday wait to under 15 minutes by the end of September. Owner: the center manager."

Section 4: out of scope: the two smaller sites and the road outside.

Section 5: hypothesis: arrivals bunch between 10 and 12 at one weighing station. Options: a booking system (high cost), a second lane (high cost), earlier opening plus peak-time signs (low cost). Recommended: try the cheap option for four Saturdays, measure, then decide.