Stage 1 — Problem Scoping

Before you build anything, you have to know what you are building it for. This first stage sounds like the easy one. It is the one projects most often get wrong.

1What problem scoping is

Problem Scoping

In problem scoping you set the goal of your AI project by stating the problem you wish to solve. You also look at the various parameters — the things that affect the problem — so that the picture becomes clearer.

The six stages, as a cycle

Tap a stage to stand on it, or press play and watch the work go round. Drag sideways to turn.

1. Problem Scoping — Decide exactly what problem the project will solve, and set the goal.

It answers: What are we trying to solve, and for whom?

2Getting the problem clear

A vague problem gives a useless project. “Help farmers” is not a problem you can build for. Keep asking questions until the sentence is small enough to act on:

Who has this problem? Farmers — which farmers, growing what?
What exactly goes wrong for them? Their crop gets a disease and they notice too late.
Where and when does it happen? In the field, during the growing season.
Why is solving it worth the effort? An early warning saves the harvest.

The sentence you are looking for

Put those answers into one line. “Small farmers in our district lose crops because leaf disease is spotted too late, so we want a system that warns them early from a photo of a leaf.” Now every later stage knows what to do: you know what data to collect, and you know what “working” will mean.

A doctor who does not ask

A doctor who hands out medicine before asking where it hurts is not being quick, they are guessing. Problem scoping is the asking. Everything after it is only as good as this.

3Parameters

Parameters are the things that affect the problem. For the crop-disease project: the type of crop, the season, rainfall, the soil, how old the plant is. Listing them now matters, because in the next stage these are exactly the things you will go and collect data about.

If you did AI in Class 9

You may remember the 4Ws Problem Canvas — Who, What, Where, Why — from the earlier class. It is the same idea, written into a table. Your Class 10 syllabus does not ask for the canvas itself, only for what problem scoping does.

4From the board papers

What is the purpose of defining the problem statement during the Problem Scoping stage in an AI project cycle?
(A) To collect data (B) To understand the aim and objective of the project (C) To train the model (D) To process dataCBSE AI Class X textbook, Unit 1

1 mark

▶Show the answer

(B). The problem statement is what tells everyone what the project is for. Collecting and processing data come later, and they are done because of what the problem statement says.

5Check yourself

Quick Check

Which of these is a properly scoped problem?

Quick Check

In problem scoping, what are parameters?

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🗺️ What is the AI Project Cycle?

Stage 2 — Data Acquisition 📥