I read an interesting post by Jon Miller on Gemba Panta Rei today. It asked the question "Is an infinite number of possible solutions is a good thing or a bad thing?" Ultimately he concluded that it is a bad thing. A problem with an infinite number of solutions is indistinguishable from an undefined problem. The act of defining the problem creates constraints on the range of solutions.
I've seen this in action many times. I'm a product owner for a team that uses Scrum. I present the team with a user story. They respond "Pete, this is way too vague, we can't estimate how much work it is." So we talk about different ways of breaking the problem up into smaller chunks. Eventually we have several smaller, more constrainted user stories that we can estimate.
The possibilites are no longer infinite, but now we see ways to solve the problem.
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