Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)

Jobs To Be Done (JTBD)

Background

The problems people and businesses encounter rarely change, however the products they hire to solve these problems change all the time. The best products focus on developing solutions that their users will want to use because they delivers a better outcome.

Therefore, it stands to reason that a solid understanding of the outcomes users want, and how they currently get it, are essential in product development. This is where adopting a Jobs to be Done mindset is very helpful.

It’s easier to make things people want than it is to make people want things.

Making things that users want

Making things users want involves understanding a longstanding human or business need and then using technology to:

  1. Remove steps: This is the most common for start-ups. Pick a need where the existing solutions are old, complex and bloated, and find the simplest smallest set of steps possible to deliver the same outcome.
  2. Make it possible for more people: This usually involves reducing the cost (in time or money), or barriers to using the product so that more people can use it.
  3. Make it possible in more situations: This involves removing common situational limitations on a workflow e.g. accepting payment used to involve bulky machines, ISDN lines, and nightly batch transaction transfers. Today you swipe a card through a phone and you’re done.

What is JTBD?

The designers at intercom use this illustration to show what is, and isn’t, important to customers.


JTBD Diagram

JTBD is a theory of consumer action to help encapsulate the fundamental customer problem by investigating the causality, anxieties, and motivations of what they do now.

JTBD Diagram

It describes the mechanisms that cause a consumer to adopt an innovation. JTBD aims to answer several social phenomena such as:

  1. What causes someone to purchase a product for the first time?
  2. Why and how do consumers use markets to adapt in a changing world
  3. Why and how do consumers shop (search for new products, services, and technologies)?
  4. Why and how do consumers switch between products?

The theory suggests (hypothesizes) that a consumer will look for, buy, and use a product for the first time when a discrepancy exists between how things are today and how they want them to be in the future.

JTBD is about understanding why consumers change their historical purchase patterns — i.e. why they would stop using product X and start using product Y. Understanding what conditions must exist for this behavior change is important.

If you want people to start using your product, then you’re gonna have to persuade them to stop using the products they use today, and start using your product.

I love how 11:fs applied JTBD to their client engagements, this video explains it well:

Here is also a link to a report show how they used JTBD thinking to identify the right opportunity space to tackle.

An important gotcha

The term "Jobs to be Done" (JTBD) in product management has evolved into two distinct and somewhat incompatible interpretations, reflecting different approaches to understanding and applying the concept.

The first interpretation, often associated with the late Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christensen, views JTBD as a theory focused on the progress that a customer seeks in a given circumstance. This approach emphasizes understanding the customer's struggle for progress and the circumstances of that struggle. It posits that products and services are essentially hired by customers to do a job, and success in the market depends on how well these offerings help customers achieve their goals or make progress. This perspective is less about the product features or the customer themselves, and more about the context and the specific job at hand. It's an approach that seeks to understand and respond to the underlying customer behavior.

The second interpretation takes a more structured task-oriented approach, often associated with Tony Ulwick, views JTBD as a technique for identifying and defining customer needs. It involves breaking down the job that customers are trying to get done into specific steps, identifying where they encounter difficulties or inefficiencies. In this view, understanding and improving the customer's job is achieved by focusing on the those discrete steps and measurable outcomes that comprise it.

Both interpretations agree on the fundamental idea that understanding what customers are trying to achieve is key to successful product development. However, they diverge in the implementation of that idea.

A Practical use case

In product development, User stories are used to describe a feature from the user's perspective. Usually Written in the format "As a [type of user], I want [some goal] so that [some benefit]".

They are intended to guide developers to focus on user needs and define the criteria for a feature's completion. However, all is not good with User Stories. The illustration below explains the problems with this approach:


User Story

Enter the Job Story

This philosophy of focusing on causality, anxieties, and motivations is at the heart of Jobs To Be Done, and a granular way to bring this concept into product development is to use Job Stories:

Job Stories are a different way of thinking about defining features, UI, and UX. They are a powerful way to facilitate team conversation and discovery when designing products.


Job Story

I highly recommend reading Alan Klement excellent article on Replacing The User Story With The Job Story to understand the difference between the two.

Here is the high level approach:

  1. Start with the high level job.
  2. Identify a smaller job or jobs which help resolve the higher level job.
  3. Observe how people solve the problem now (which job do they currently use).
  4. Come up with a Job Story, or Job Stories, that investigate the causality, anxieties, and motivations of what they do now.
  5. Create a solution (usually in the form of a feature or UI change) which resolves that Job Story

Additional Material

Web Articles

Books

Youtube Videos

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