COMPANY MONTHLY REPORT
JANUARY 6, 2026
CLOUD COMPUTING
THE
PROBLEM
DISCOVERY
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COMPANY MONTHLY REPORT
DR C RAJESH BABU
CLOUD COMPUTING – PROBLEM DISCOVERY ACTIVITY
(Problem Definition Only)
Program: II Year [Link] CSE
Team Size: 3 Students
Mode: Notebook-Based, In-Class
Final Output:
✔ One Well-De ned Problem Statement
✔ One Clear Problem Title
Purpose of This Activity
In professional app and cloud product development, vague problems lead to weak
products.
This activity trains you to:
• Observe real-life challenges deeply
• Move from generic feelings → speci c situations
• Capture who, where, when, why, and impact
• Converge as a team on one clearly articulated problem
🚫 This activity is NOT about solutions
🚫 Do NOT think about features, apps, or technologies yet
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📒 Ground Rules
• Each student uses their own notebook
• No mobiles / laptops
• All thinking must be written, not verbal only
• Generic statements are not acceptable unless expanded
🧭 Overall Flow
Observe → Describe → Question → Narrow → De ine
🪜 Step-by-Step Procedure
STEP 1: Individual Observation (Personal Experience Only)
⏱ 10 minutes | ✍ Individual
Each student writes 5 daily-life challenges they personally experience.
📌 At this stage, students often write generic sentences like:
• “Students feel stressed”
• “Assignments are difficult”
• “No time to complete work”
⚠ These are NOT problems yet — they are signals.
So for each challenge, students must expand it using the ODQ Framework below.
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🧩 ODQ Framework (Mandatory Expansion)
For each challenge, answer all questions:
Prompt Student Must Write
O – Observation What exactly happened? (real incident)
D – Description Where & when does it happen?
Q – Question What exactly makes this dif cult?
📌 Example Transformation
❌ “Students feel stressed”
⬇
✅ “During continuous internal assessments, I experience stress because multiple assignment
deadlines from different subjects overlap within the same week, leaving insufficient time for
preparation and submission.”
👉 Rule:
If the sentence still sounds emotional or vague, rewrite it again.
STEP 2: Individual Deepening (From Feeling to Situation)
⏱ 10 minutes | ✍ Individual
Now each student takes any 2 challenges from Step 1 and deepens them further using the
5W–1H prompts.
Prompt Write Clearly
Who is affected? Student / group
What exactly is the dif culty? Concrete task
When does it occur? Time / frequency
Where does it occur? College / home / online
Why does it occur? Root cause
How does it affect them? Time loss / errors / stress
📌 This step forces speci city.
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STEP 3: Team Sharing (No Judging Yet)
⏱ 10 minutes | 🗣 Team Discussion
Each student explains one expanded problem to teammates.
📒 In notebook:
• Write all 3 problems on one page
• Do NOT merge yet
• Only listen and note similarities
📌 At this stage, teams usually realize:
“We all wrote stress, but for different reasons.”
That realization is the learning objective.
STEP 4: Identify the REAL Problem Beneath the General
Term
⏱ 10 minutes | 🧠 Team Thinking
Now, the team answers:
“What is the actual difficulty beneath this general statement?”
Use this Problem Decomposition Table:
General Statement What Actually Causes It?
Stress Deadline clashes
No time Poor scheduling visibility
Confusion Information scattered
Anxiety Lack of timely updates
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📌 Rule:
Your final problem cannot contain emotional words like:
❌ stress
❌ tension
❌ pressure
Instead, it must describe the operational dif culty.
STEP 5: Commonality Check (Beyond the Team)
⏱ 10 minutes | 🧑🤝🧑 Team Discussion
For each refined problem, ask:
Question Answer
Do other students face this? Yes / No
Is it recurring? Daily / Weekly
Is it currently manual or unstructured? Yes / No
Does it involve coordination or tracking? Yes / No
📌 Drop problems that:
• Are emotional but not operational
• Occur very rarely
• Have no observable workflow
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STEP 6: Converge to ONE Problem (Critical Thinking Step)
⏱ 10 minutes | 🎯 Team Decision
From all shortlisted problems, select ONE.
The notebook must include this sentence:
“Our team converged on this problem because it is experienced by many students, occurs
repeatedly, and involves a clear process-related difficulty rather than a general feeling.”
📌 If this sentence cannot be written honestly, the problem is not ready.
STEP 7: Write the Final Problem Statement (Structured
Format)
✍ Use only this format:
“Currently, __________ experience difficulty in __________ during __________ due to
__________, which results in __________.”
📌 Checklist before writing:
• No emotional words
• Mentions situation, not feeling
• Mentions process gap, not solution
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COMPANY MONTHLY REPORT
STEP 8: Create the Problem Title (Descriptive, Not
Technical)
✔ 5–8 words
✔ Reflects the difficulty clearly
❌ Avoid words like stress, problem, issue
📌 Title should answer:
“What is going wrong?”
📤 Final Notebook Evidence Required
Each team must show:
1. Individual raw challenges (Step 1)
2. Expanded ODQ responses
3. 5W–1H deepening
4. Decomposition table
5. Final converged problem statement
6. Final problem title
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COMPANY MONTHLY REPORT
“You didn’t solve a problem today.
You learned how to see one clearly.
That skill matters more than coding.”