"We have had a series of power outages even though we have central and local uninterrupted power supply (UPS) systems. This disruption causes a loss of service to our customers. While we don’t necessarily lose data, it’s an irritant, and also results in loss of productivity. Perhaps we could attribute it to the lack of adequate UPS capacity. Alternatively, the independent UPS systems also contribute to the disruption, as we don’t keep track of these stand-alone units. Neither do we perform any maintenance on these units; thus some of these units may be past their useful life. This is generally accepted practice but not what’s called for in our procedures. We understand that this is reality and there will always be stand alone UPS units. We really need to solve the problem to avert future disasters. By the way, we don’t even know how many of these units we have in use and although our policies don’t allow the use of these stand-alone units, I have seen them in the IT department itself.”

This paragraph does not provide a clear problem statement; rather, it’s background information that helps in understanding the importance and relevance of the issue. You have to dig through this commentary to find the real problem. Often these types of statements are presented as problem definitions, when in actuality you have to sift through them to find the real issue.

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