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Many organizational problems are addressed through change to existing Information Systems (IT) rather than radical new design. In the face of high incidence of IT project failure, devising effective ways to tackle this type of change remains an open challenge. The paper discusses the motivation, theoretical foundation, characteristics and evaluation of a novel framework, referred to as POE‐Δ, which is rooted in design and engineering and is aimed at providing systematic support for representing, structuring and exploring change problems. We generalize an existing theory of greenfield design as problem solving for application to change problems: from a theoretical perspective POE‐Δ is a subset of its parent framework, allowing the seamless integration of greenfield and brownfield design to tackle change problems. Its initial case study evaluation shows that POE‐Δ allows the systematic analysis of change problems, leading to clearer understanding and better informed decision making. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.