A little while back a friend complained about “5 Whys” in Feature Injection. “People don’t like it when you ask “Why?” over and over” they said. “Well, no one actually asks Why five times. There are many ways to ask why without actually asking “Why?” I replied. Here is a random ten questions off the top of my head. Please add your own in the comments.
If you want to find out more about Feature Injection ( or Story Mapping, User Stories or Impact Mapping), come and join Christian Hassa, David Evans, Gojko Adzic and me at the Product Owner Survival Camp on 21st Jan in London Town.
Random Ten Alternatives:
1. What do you want me to do with this stuff you’ve put in the system?
2. Now that we’ve stored it, what do you want to do with it?
3. When would we use this?
4. How would we use this information?
5. What reports / screens would you display this on?
6. What would the report / screen look like?
7. How would you use the report?
8. Who would use the report / screen?
9. When would it be useful to them?
10. Errr?
11. What?
12. Eh?
13. Huh?
14. And?
15. Then?
16. Really Blackadder?
17. Draw it please?
18. This is valuable how?
19. I don’t think you are telling me everything?
20. Go on!
21. Why?
The IT Risk Manager 
December 31st, 2013 at 10:15 am
My favourite is silence. Give people about 3-4 seconds of silence, and they’ll often start telling you the reason behind the reason.
December 31st, 2013 at 5:03 pm
Hi Graham
Nice, Very nice
Chris
August 9th, 2016 at 12:03 pm
[…] Product Owner: “Why?“ […]
February 9th, 2017 at 5:55 am
[…] I was hunting around on Chris Matts’ blog for another purpose and found some additional alternatives to the five whys. […]
January 14th, 2019 at 4:05 pm
[…] Asking why five times can you make you look quite pedantic, so it’s always helpful to come up with ways to disguise your curiosity. I compiled a list of ten alternatives to asking why. Chris Matts also suggested 21 other ways. […]