Problem - Prior Attempts.

Best for: Proving in an investor deck that the easy answers are gone, pre-empting the "we have heard this before" objection on an internal re-proposal, settling past spend before a budget is re-approved, establishing why a new approach is required

Use: When three or four remedies have already been funded and stalled, and that record is the argument for a new approach. Use it to prove the easy answers are gone in an investor deck, to pre-empt the "we have heard this before" objection on a re-proposal, or to settle past spend before a budget is re-approved. Each attempt needs a result figure. With narrative only and no numbers, the outcome row goes empty and the layout loses the weight it is built around.

Avoid: Use comparison-decision-matrix or comparison-pros-cons to weigh options not yet chosen, problem-root-cause to draw the structural cause, problem-cost-of-inaction for the future cost of doing nothing, timeline-before-after-pivot for a turnaround that worked. A positive post-project retrospective belongs in closing-lessons-learned. With two attempts or fewer the columns read empty, so fold them into problem-statement as prose; past four the columns get too narrow for a two or three line reason, so keep the four that cost the most.