I'm talking about that problem we're faced with that lives in a space we are not sufficiently familiar with. We know if we try to search that dark place it's going to hurt the head. This kind of thinking is hard work. The typical motivation when faced with such a task is to get it over with asap. That's one reason we're satisfied with cheap solutions - those that look good at the high planning level but never deliver on the promise.
Cheap solutions loose it when the details added later by others lack coherence and synergy.
Tools can help a lot here, especially tools that move the smoky abstract things into the tangible world where we can see what the concepts really are and how they fit with everything else. Good tools will transform a cheap solution into a robust solution. The purpose of the tool is to ensure that the final design actually addresses real issues, and isn't simply an implementation of faddish notions or personal management philosophies. Design elements we felt were important all of a sudden declared how that importance would be realized and how important it was - and the process of applying the tool often altered the vague activity descriptions we had previously accepted. So much for the issue-focused part.