Interesting. I try to do something like this, but way simpler and my productivity is low right now. Maybe more practice will help. Would you say you're usually good at doing this and getting results?
The Minto Pyramid Principle (MPP) offers an analogous, perhaps more accessible, process to problem solving similar to Andrew’s description.
You use a problem solving process built on structured analysis by first defining the problem in terms of an Undesired Result (R1), Desired Result (R2) — the S and S’ in Andrew’s process. Then, you determine the Starting Point in terms of the logical structures that generate your R1; these structures can be a sequence of cause-effect, a structural decomposition (e.g. of organization, geography, etc.), a classification, or some combination of the three. From this structure you can hypothesize experiments to confirm/disconfirm where the causes are. With these causes in hand, you can generate possible solutions or corrective actions. Finally, you’d evaluate your alternatives and arrive at your solution to move from R1->R2.
MPP’s problem solving process has the additional advantage of structuring your actions/results in a way that makes writing a document or presentation simple and straightforward, to convince others for example.
Check out the book if you’re interested in improving your problem solving and analysis skills.
At this point, I consider it deterministic in terms of efficacy
So you can basically hand me any problem and I will implement this process, and I have a high success rate for delivering desired outcomes.
And again, this isn’t really like my process I invented. It boils down into a practical implementation of a Markoff process in planning as applied to any set of tasks such they could be discretely described as a state machine.
The key challenge IMO is in describing the state machine, and that is what takes a lot of elucidation.
In many cases we don’t have the ability to precisely describe a process as a state machine because we haven’t defined the boundaries of the system, and then measured it enough, in enough different dimensions, across enough time to be able to give that level of understanding to input an outputs.
Are you trying to learn Dijkstra/Hoare/Floyd style programming techniques or are you trying to understand the idea of usage of "Markov Processes" (totally unnecessary) in the comment?
Ah, this is a more general question on which it is hard to give specific suggestions because "problem-solving" can mean anything/everything without knowing your exact context.
However you might want to start with The Thinker's Toolkit by Morgan Jones. This gives you a catalog of models which teaches you to structure your requirements born from problem analysis in various ways to aid problem-solving.
You use a problem solving process built on structured analysis by first defining the problem in terms of an Undesired Result (R1), Desired Result (R2) — the S and S’ in Andrew’s process. Then, you determine the Starting Point in terms of the logical structures that generate your R1; these structures can be a sequence of cause-effect, a structural decomposition (e.g. of organization, geography, etc.), a classification, or some combination of the three. From this structure you can hypothesize experiments to confirm/disconfirm where the causes are. With these causes in hand, you can generate possible solutions or corrective actions. Finally, you’d evaluate your alternatives and arrive at your solution to move from R1->R2.
MPP’s problem solving process has the additional advantage of structuring your actions/results in a way that makes writing a document or presentation simple and straightforward, to convince others for example.
Check out the book if you’re interested in improving your problem solving and analysis skills.