Article · Short read, about 5 minutes

What Are the Five Whys (5 Whys)

Productboard Free Beginner

When a customer hands you feature X, the Five Whys is the simplest technique for drilling from that request down to the real job underneath. This piece lays out the method in plain product terms, developed at Toyota and now a staple of product discovery, so you can run it on your next request in ten minutes. It is a concrete tool to pair with the mindset from the other two picks. Use it as a first pass, not a rigid procedure.

• Ask why five times (roughly) to move from a stated feature to the root problem the customer is trying to solve.
• Anchor each answer in evidence, not guesses, so you drill toward a real cause and not a story you prefer.
• The root you reach often points to a different, better solution than the feature that was originally requested.