I came across the term wicked problem last night. While the definition is technical and somewhat narrow in scope, a simpler, general paraphrase might be: a problem which can only be understood by solving it (a different syntactic rendering might be - a problem which can only be understood in the solving).
In the world of data driven solutions - that is to say, the creation of systems which derive solutions to problems from large volumes of data - one can never really know what the solution will look like until the characteristics of the data and the aspects of the world that the data represents, are fully understood. Consequently, the idea of planning a system based on inferences over a data set that has not been fully analyzed and grokked is somewhat foolish.
The solution is twofold. Firstly, one has to have a solid platform on which to experiment with the data set. Secondly one has to have an iterative planning process with enough flexibility in it to optimize over the search space represented by the characteristics of the data.
Comments