Evaluating the problem

You may chose any other word to describe it, challenge, job, opportunity, issue, depending on who is presenting (recruiter, manager, stakeholder) it to you and under which circumstance (interview, task force meeting, strategy workshop) the fundamental traits of the problem is that something has to be done. The "something" might be a complex monster of a problem to something that you might consider easy and fairly straightforward. Regardless you will likely have some to relate to it in some way, I have some steps to consider when in a very early phase of evaluation of many types of problems (at least those where you are not in immediate risk of physical harm).

Internal evaluation
The first part of evaluating the problem should be an honest internal reflection of your own thoughts and feelings about the problem. Does it make sense for you? Can you handle it, or are you willing to make a big dive into the unknown and give it a try? If you are thinking about this as a product owner, is it big enough and important enough to be engaging? Depending on your personal preferences you might have many aspects to consider but if you are lucky and have several options to make a living then an important parameter should be if you have passion for the problem and feel empathy or can identify yourself with the users, customers and stakeholders. If you have that, you can overcome obstacles on the long and winding path ahead, if not consider if the cause is important enough for the sacrifice to put all your energy into something that you might not enjoy. Even for personal considerations talking to someone is often helpful, discuss it with your wife, a close friend or someone you have deep trust in.

A key thing to remember is that for most problems the primary concern is how to solve it, if you  don't intend to do that all parties benefit from knowing this. Even when you decide to accept the challenge things might change along the road, if at any point you are not committed to solving the problem that needs to discussed with the persons that are counting on you to do so.

Sharing
The very initial steps can feel lonely, maybe you are given an objective from a senior manager, maybe it comes with a new job. But there are multiple ways to reach out for support and breaking out of doing it all by yourself. Regardless of how you like to solve problems you radically increase your ability to succeed if you are open to ask for help. There are possible exceptions, such as security classified work, but if such restrictions apply you would probably be well aware of what those are.

In a dream situation you have all resources in the world but there is a lot that can be done with very little. Share your problem so that others know that you are thinking about it, as fantastic the human brain is it is safe to assume that your particular brain doesn't know all or even most about this type of problem. So many problems appear to be unique snowflakes that have their own peculiarities but that is likely only because you haven't seen many similar problems yourself, find people who have. As a general rule I typically think that few things in life are truly unique, looking around you will be surprised how often you can find someone who has done something similar and knows more than you about the problem. You might know a million things, but there is an almost infinite amount of things you don't know but others do know.

Invest in getting data and become informed before taking further action. This can take surprisingly small amounts of effort and be fairly cheap, read a few books, talk to an expert, look for similar projects on the web, all these can be done in hours or days. Keep your mind open, document options or discuss them with someone else to make sure your reasoning is sound and as far as possible unbiased.

Classification
Frequently when considering problems I fall back to basic complexity classification of the problem. This does not require you to be able to solve the problem or have a specific skill. Using the Cynefin framework you can figure out what type of problem you are dealing with and act accordingly. Using a method roughly suitable for the problem you have at hand will greatly increase your chances to solve it. If you end up building a team to create the solution, the complexity analysis and your previous findings will be the source of information on how to put that team together.

At this point you will likely have enough information to get working on the problem. Can you solve it with standard software, do you need to build something similar to things that exist or something completely novel? It will be critical to formulate some kind of definition of the problem, this will be very important to be able to maintain focus and solve the problem rather than digressing and trying to solve a hundred different problems.

If you find solutions that might fall outside of what is expected do not discard them too quickly. It is very rare that solutions are considered too easy or fast or cheap, if it works then pursue it, if your job is based on solving the problem you are very likely to find a new job if you have successfully solved the current one.

Documentation
Writing a few lines about what you did and how you went about it has great value. The initial steps and persons who helped you along that way will be great input for the culture forming in a new team, or great help for anyone else facing a similar problem. Your thoughts and analysis can provide important clues and context that is invaluable to understanding the problem.