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Jobs to be done


Jobs to be done
Steps
Outcomes
Importance
Satisfaction
Opportunity Gap
1
Discover & Select
Minimise the effort to identify the lab test for me
90%
30%
150%
2
​
Minimise the effort to re-order the same test
70%
40%
100%
3
​
Maximise the likelihood to come back as a repeat customer.
80%
10%
150%
4
Order
Minimise the number of clicks to place an order
60%
60%
60%
5
Sample Collection
Maximise my confidence that my sample collection will be seamless and painless
70%
20%
120%
6
​
Minimise my need to plan for the day of collection
60%
40%
80%
7
Results
Maximise my confidence to interpret my Lab test result
90%
10%
170%
8
​
Maximise my confidence to ask for support when needed
55%
40%
70%
There are no rows in this table
575%
Sum
⁠

Importance

unimportant Very important
1 2. 3. 4 5

Satisfied

Unsatisfied Very Satisfied
1. 2 3 4 5


But depending on your source, between 70% and 95% of all new products fail. Statistically speaking, your product is going to flop.

The reason so many innovators fail and so many products flop is that innovators don’t really understand what it is their customers want. Moreover, they don’t know what inputs they need from customers to make innovation predictable.
Jobs-to-be-Done is best defined as a perspective — a lens through which you can observe markets, customers, needs, competitors, and customer segments differently, and by doing so, make innovation far more predictable and profitable.
Jobs-to-be-Done helps product managers to:
Conceptualize new products
Improve existing products
Prioritize product backlog
Create a product roadmap
Design a user experience
Validate the potential of
an offering before development begins

Products come and go, but the customer’s job-to-be-done is stable over time. With a stable unit of analysis, you can define customer needs that are stable over time, too, which gives you unique, robust targets for value creation.
The theory is based on the notion that people buy products and services to get a “job” done. Jobs Theory goes on to say that by understanding in detail what that “job” entails, you are far more likely to create and market solutions that will win in the marketplace.

Tenet 01

People buy products and services to get a “job” done.
A job is not a description of what the customer is doing, the solution they are using, or the steps they are taking to get a job done. Rather, the job is what the customer is ultimately trying to accomplish. The core job-to-be-done is defined as a “functional job.”
With this in mind, you can define your market as a group of people and the functional job they are trying to get done.
People have underlying problems they are trying to resolve.
patients who is trying to log on for a virtual consultation
Students studying to pass his theory test
politicians campaigning to win an election
When you define a market this way, you clarify your target customer and the job you are going to help the customer accomplish with your product or service offering

Tenet 02

Jobs are functional— with emotional and social components.
As a customer uses a product or service to get a functional job done, they often want to feel a certain way or be perceived in a certain light by their peers, friends or others. The ways they want to feel and be perceived are called emotional and social jobs-to-be-done.
For politicians trying to win an election, they would also share incentives to make them look good and generous. Share all their achievement and awards to be perceived leaders and successful
Understanding the emotional and social components of the functional job brings rich insights that can lead to the creation of a value proposition that highly resonates with customers — at both a functional and emotional level.

Tenet 03

A Job-to-be-Done is stable over time.

A functional job-to-be-done is often something people have been trying to accomplish for years, decades— or even centuries. Politicians have been trying to win the masses over for centuries.
A functional job is stable over time.
What changes are the products and services that companies offer to help get the job done better.
Because the job-to-be-done is stable over time, it is an attractive focal point around which to create customer value for many years. With this in mind, your business’ strategy should always be to help customers get the entire job done better and more cheaply on a single product platform. This is the long-term strategy that Amazon has pursued since its inception.

Tenet 04

A Job-to-be-Done is solution agnostic.

this means it is independent of any solutions or technologies.
Innovation isn’t about “a faster horse.” A “horse” is a solution to get a job done. The job (transporting yourself from point A to point B) must be defined independently of the solution (the horse). This is how new, breakthrough solutions can be conceptualized (like the automobile).
Customers don’t know what solutions will get a job done best— they couldn’t envision the car or the microwave or the smartphone. But customers do know what job they are trying to get done and can tell you all about it.

Tenet 05

Success comes from making the job the unit of analysis, rather than the product or the customer.

Making the job-to-be-done the unit of analysis means it is the job — not the product, the customer, the circumstance, the purchase process or customer demographics — that you need to study, dissect and understand at a granular level of detail.
Henry Ford said it best, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” The point Ford is making is that innovators cannot simply ask customers what solutions they want, because customers rarely know — and why should they? They are not engineers, scientists and technolo- gists. We cannot expect them to tell us the solution.
That’s why as innovators we must change the unit of analysis when talking to customers. While they often do not know what solutions will best satisfy their needs, customers do know what they are trying to accomplish as it relates to getting a job done. They know what aspects of the job are time consuming, unpredictable and ineffective. They can define their needs around the job-to-be-done.
With a focus on the customer’s job-to-be-done, you are able to: 1. Identify where and why customers are struggling to get the job done. 2. Brainstorm ideas for new offerings 3. Determine in advance of development which ideas will help customers get the job done best. When you define a market this way, you clarify your target customer and the job you are going to help the customer accomplish with your product or service offering

Tenet 06

A deep understanding of the customer’s job makes marketing more effective — and innovation far more predictable.

A deep understanding of the customer’s job makes marketing more effective — and innovation far more predictable.
If your team can agree on what a customer need is, what the customer’s needs are, and which customer needs are unmet or underserved, you are able to:
1. Better position and sell more of the company’s existing products.
2. Improve existing products and services.
3. Create new products and services.

Tenet 07

Innovation becomes predictable when “needs” are defined as the metrics customers use to measure success when getting the job done.

In order to determine if your new product idea will help a customer get a job done better and/or more cheaply, you must be able to evaluate competing ideas against a stable set of metrics.
The metrics we use to conduct this evaluation are the customer’s desired outcomes. In other words, we define customer needs (desired outcomes) as the metrics that customers use to measure success when getting the job done. These metrics are extracted from customers through customer interviews. Customers typically use between 50 and 150 metrics to explain the successful execution of the job. Capturing all of them is the key to success.
Quantify which needs are underserved and over-served.
• Discover segments of customers with different unmet needs.
• Use the metrics as a baseline against which you can test product ideas and concepts before they are developed.

Tenet 08

People want products and services that will help them 0 8 get a job done better and/or more cheaply.

We have learned that people aren’t loyal to companies or brands.
They are loyal to getting a job done better
(faster, more predictably, and with higher output/ throughput) and/or more cheaply. They replace existing products and services with those
that help them achieve these goals.
We have learned that some people are willing to pay more to get a job done better, while others are willing to pay less to get a job done worse. Knowing what types of customers exist in your market (and in what proportions) forms the foundation for a new way to think about your growth strategy.

Tenet 09

People seek out products and services that enable them to get the entire job done on a single platform

There are many products and services available in the market that only get part of a job done. Customers are left to cobble together solutions in order to get the entire job done. But customers don’t want to cobble together the solution. They want a complete solution presented to them.
Your goal should therefore always be to help your customers get their entire job done on a single platform. And you can accelerate this process once you know exactly what steps the customer goes through to complete the job.
Nespresso is a great example. The company worked for years with a single strategy in mind: to enable customers to get the job of “preparing a hot beverage for consumption” done on a single platform.


Your focus is not on reacting to customer feedback or product trends in the market. It is to create solutions that improve people’s ability to get the core job done.
Markets are not defined as categories of products/services (e.g., the animal nutrition market). They are defined as groups of people trying to get a job done (e.g., dairy producers optimizing herd productivity).
Competitors are not only companies that make products like yours. They are any solution (paid and non-paid) that customers use to get the core job done.
When your company thinks about a market from this perspective, you are much more likely to create and deliver extraordinary products and services. Product managers can more successfully conceptualize new products, improve existing products, and prioritize backlog, for example. Marketing managers can use this approach to design web pages, campaigns, and sales pitches that convert, and create content that attracts leads. Executives have the insights they need to align the organization around a common vision, inform M&A activity, and discover new markets to enter.

Define Your Market

Companies often define the markets they serve around the technology in their product offerings— a technology that one day will become obsolete.

A market, which is the focal point of everything a company does, should not be defined around something so unstable that it is only valid until the next product iteration. Instead, you should define your market around something that is stable for decades, making long-term strategic investments more attractive and providing the company with a vision for the future..
The customer’s job-to-be-done provides that stable focal point around which you can create value—and define your market. More specifically, you should define your market as a group of people and the job they are trying to get done

The Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) framework focuses on understanding the functional jobs people are trying to accomplish and recognizing how the methods and technologies used to perform these jobs evolve over time. Here are 10 examples of functional jobs that have remained the same while the technologies used to accomplish them have changed:
Communicating with Others
Old Technology: Landline telephones, postal mail.
New Technology: Smartphones, email, instant messaging apps.
Shopping for Groceries
Old Technology: Physical supermarkets, handwritten shopping lists.
New Technology: Online grocery shopping platforms, mobile shopping apps.
Accessing Information
Old Technology: Encyclopedias, libraries.
New Technology: Internet search engines, Wikipedia, digital libraries.
Navigating from One Place to Another
Old Technology: Paper maps, road atlases.
New Technology: GPS devices, smartphone navigation apps.
Listening to Music
Old Technology: Vinyl records, cassette tapes, CDs.
New Technology: Streaming services, digital downloads.
Taking Notes
Old Technology: Notebooks, typewriters.
New Technology: Laptops, tablets, note-taking apps.
Watching Movies
Old Technology: VCRs, DVDs, movie theaters.
New Technology: Streaming services, digital rentals/purchases.
Learning and Education
Old Technology: Chalkboards, physical textbooks, in-person classes.
New Technology: E-learning platforms, interactive whiteboards, online courses.
Banking and Financial Management
Old Technology: Physical bank branches, paper statements.
New Technology: Online banking, mobile banking apps, digital wallets.
Recording and Sharing Memories
Old Technology: Film cameras, photo albums, handwritten diaries.
New Technology: Digital cameras, social media platforms, cloud storage.
These examples illustrate how the core functional jobs people need to accomplish have stayed consistent, while the technologies used to perform these jobs have evolved dramatically over time
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