Diagnosing Wicked Problems

Horst Rittel defined his wicked problems theory to differentiate wicked problems, which are open-ended and controversial, from tame problems, which have a single correct solution. Rittel identified ten properties of wicked problems but did not indicate if all of these properties needed to hold before something could be deemed wicked. Failure to correctly classify a problem as wicked is likely to result in either design failure (if wickedness is not identified and problems are tamed prematurely) or design paralysis (if incorrectly perceived wickedness is used as an excuse for not buckling down to do the work of identifying and implementing solutions). Here we augment Rittel’s theory by identifying ten causes of wickedness and describe how those can be used along with his ten properties to identify wicked problems in cases where not all of his properties apply.