Understand, Design, Build: A Framework for Problem-Solving

Putting UDB in action

I’ve found this framework to be most useful in three situations:

When mentoring interns and entry-level engineers
When approaching gnarly problems that we don’t know how to solve right away
When diagnosing why a project isn’t going well

UDB is a really simple tool for helping less experienced engineers slow down and think about the work they’re doing. When projects are taking radically longer than expected, or when there’s significant backtracking, it’s a pretty good sign that either the core business problem isn’t well-understood by the implementing team, or that the design isn’t fully baked. Making mental frameworks like UDB available to everybody helps us decentralize decision-making as we scale up, keeping it where it belongs: in the hands of the engineers who are solving problems autonomously, and the teams that support them in getting good work done.

Source: lob.com