I recently had to explain why a task was taking longer than expected, and I needed a place to vocalise my thoughts, so here we go. In my experience generally there are two kinds of problems which tasks can be put into(not some tasks can be both). Wide problem being something is not necessarily difficult to implement but it’s changes require changes all over the code bases, an example being a blocking mechanism. Deep problems are problems which will be complex but in a very limited domain. An example might be adding a new feature which is distinct and does not rely on too much other code. Image of wide vs deep problems