Jobs to be done
Jobs to be done (JTBD) is a framework that describes products in terms of the progress a customer is trying to make in a given situation, rather than the customer's attributes or the product's features.
Also known as JTBD, Jobs theory
What is a job in jobs-to-be-done?
A job is the underlying goal a customer is trying to accomplish, framed independently of any solution. The classic example: people do not want a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole, and really they want to hang a shelf.
A well-written job statement usually captures a situation, a motivation and a desired outcome.
Why use jobs-to-be-done instead of personas?
They answer different questions. Personas describe who the customer is; jobs describe what they are trying to achieve and why they would switch. Many teams use both, mapping the key jobs each persona is hiring the product to do.
Where do you find the jobs?
In the customer's own words. Support tickets, sales calls, reviews and interviews are full of the situations and motivations that reveal the real job, especially the moments where someone switched from an old way of doing things.
Put it into practice
Jobs to be done, in brief
Jobs to be done is a framework that describes products in terms of the progress a customer is trying to make in a situation, rather than the customer's demographics or the product's feature list.
Hiring a ride-share app to get to the airport on time without the stress of parking is a job. The situation, motivation and desired outcome matter more than the customer's age or the app's features.
Related terms
- Customer personaA customer persona is a research-based profile of a target customer that captures their goals, behaviours, pain points and context, so teams can make decisions with a specific person in mind.Read more
- Product discoveryProduct discovery is the work of deciding what to build and why, by validating that a proposed solution is valuable, usable, feasible and viable before committing significant engineering effort to it.Read more
- Voice of customerVoice of customer (VoC) is the practice of systematically capturing what customers say about their needs, expectations and experiences, and feeding it back into product, marketing and service decisions.Read more
- Product-market fitProduct-market fit is the point at which a product satisfies a strong market demand so well that customers adopt, stay and recommend it, and demand begins to pull the business forward.Read more
- Feature prioritisationFeature prioritisation is deciding which product changes to build first, by weighing how many customers a problem affects and how badly against what it would cost to solve.Read more
- Customer interviewA customer interview is a one-to-one conversation with a current or potential customer, used to understand their goals, problems and behaviour in their own words, usually by asking about specific things they have done.Read more
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