When creating a product, the main goal is to create something people would want to use. But saying that is easier than actually doing it. To come up with a solution that meets the needs of a large user base, you need to really understand those needs. So how can this be achieved?
According to Stephen Wunker, author of Jobs To Be Done,
By focusing on jobs-to-be-done, you can identify and cater to the real needs of your customers, leading to innovative solutions and greater market success.
This builds on the core concept of the Jobs To Be Done framework, whether viewed through a marketing lens or in product development.
In this article, we explore how the Jobs To Be Done framework gives us a structured way to understand what customers really need and how it sparks new ideas for products.
What is the Jobs to Be Done framework?
The Jobs To Be Done framework offers a way to define, categorize, and organize all customer’s needs. It helps you understand what tasks or problems your customers are trying to solve with your product.
Using this approach, you can gather a complete set of customer needs in days, instead of months, and these insights remain relevant for years. Many products fail because they don’t meet real customer needs, and it’s unsurprising given that most product teams don’t agree on what a “customer need” really means.
This framework can help teams understand the tasks customers are trying to accomplish and the metrics they use to gauge success.
Benefits of using a Jobs To Be Done framework
Applying the Jobs To Be Done theory helps companies to speak the same language in innovation and product delivery between them and customers.
Most importantly, having a JTBD framework lets companies:
Understand customers better
Using the Jobs To Be Done framework helps you understand why customers choose your product. It provides a comprehensive overview of their needs and motivations, so you can create solutions that positively impact their lives, ultimately leading to satisfied customers who are more likely to stick around.
Communicate offerings effectively
The JTBD theory is great for helping marketers get everyone on the same page about how to talk about their products, speaking in a way that connects with customers.
Clear and consistent messaging makes it easier for customers to understand the what and why behind your offering and how it meets their needs.
Clearer focus for your team
This framework helps your team zero in on what’s most important to your customers. The decision process on what features and improvements will have the biggest impact is much more defined.
It leaves no room for assumption and provides a guaranteed way to make informed decisions that saves time and resources to deliver results.
JTBP framework provides invaluable insights to help inform different business disciplines on how to connect with customers, focus your efforts, and build products that last.
Jobs to Be Done framework components
“A job-to-be-done is a statement of what a customer wants to accomplish and the metrics they use to measure success and failure,” according to Tony Ulwick.
The JTBD framework gives you a platform to understand these goals and metrics more efficiently.
Here are the main components of the JTBD framework:
1. Job statements
Job statements are the foundation of the JTBD framework. They usually describe what the customer is trying to achieve in the following format: “I want to (job) so that (outcome).” Job statements focus product development on the most important customer needs and outcomes.
In order to create more detailed tools like job maps and persona profiles, job statements are concise and direct.
These statements include both functional and emotional jobs. For example, if someone needs to get from Point A to Point B, the functional part is the actual travel and arrival at the destination. If the distance is long, they might fly instead of driving.
On the emotional side, personal values and feelings come into play. A person committed to the environment might opt for an electric car or bike, while health considerations might encourage biking or walking. These different aspects highlight how understanding both functional and emotional jobs can lead to more tailored and effective solutions.
Other job types include personal jobs (e.g., “learn a new skill for personal growth”) and social jobs (e.g., “impress colleagues with my tech skills”).
2. Circumstances
Circumstances are the specific context or situation in which a job is performed, and they heavily influence which solutions are most suitable. Let’s have an example of “commuting to work,” which varies based on whether someone lives in a city with robust public transportation or a rural area where driving is essential.
Weighing these factors involves looking at elements like the time of day, location, available resources, and any constraints users may encounter. For example, city commuters often navigate train schedules and crowded platforms, while rural commuters may face challenges due to limited public transportation options.
3. Desired outcome statements
Desired outcome statements specify what the customer wants to achieve by completing the job. They are clear and measurable, focusing on the end result rather than the process. For instance, if the job is “find a fast and efficient way to commute to work” a desired outcome might be to “reduce commute time to less than 30 minutes.”
Shifting the focus from feature launches to working directly with customers to understand their goals gives a clear understanding of the job. With this, you can identify and categorize customer needs to accurately determine the desired outcome statements.
4. Job executors
Job executors are the people who are actively getting a specific task done. They are also referred to as a primary focus of the JTBD framework, and identifying job executors can help you understand whose needs you are attempting to meet.
Job executors include not only people who use the product, but also support groups that handle tasks such as installation, transportation, repair, and maintenance until the entire consumption chain of the job is completed. The buyer is the final line of the job executor and is responsible for making the purchasing decision.
5. Completion constraints
Completion constraints are the practical limits or challenges that affect how a job is carried out. Whether it’s tight schedules, budget restrictions, or physical barriers, these issues shape the options available. Knowing these limits is the first step in creating practical solutions. For example, if someone needs to commute quickly, their options may be limited due to transportation costs or available routes.
Getting a handle on these barriers helps you come up with solutions that work within those limits.
Jobs To Be Done growth strategy matrix
Businesses aim to empower customers to get a job done better than their competitors.
There are 5 types of growth strategies that are possible when looking at a market through a jobs-to-be-done lens, and when they should be pursued:
Differentiated strategy
A well-executed differentiated strategy attracts customers who are currently underserved by existing solutions. This strategy is based on identifying an underserved population that is willing to pay more for better job opportunities. However, if no such segment exists, this strategy may fail.
Examples: Nest thermostat is more expensive, but it offers smart home temperature control that regular thermostats cannot match. Apple’s original iPhone changed the tech ecosystem by combining a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator into one device.
Dominant strategy
Focuses on improving existing solutions for well-defined and widely adopted jobs at a lower cost. This wins over everybody; even non-consumers may enter the market if the product performs well at a low price. An example is how smartphone manufacturers continuously enhance camera technology to maintain leadership in the mobile market.
Examples: Google Search is a perfect example. It’s incredibly efficient, free to use, and easily accessible to everyone. UberX provides a cheaper and more convenient alternative to traditional taxis, while Netflix’s streaming services offer a vast library of movies and shows at a low cost, attracting a large audience
Disruptive strategy
A disruptive strategy succeeds when targeted at customers who find current solutions costly, unsatisfactory, or simply do not want to pay more. It introduces a relatively worse job experience, but at a more affordable rate that attracts people who haven’t previously engaged with similar products.
Examples: Google Docs offers a simpler, cheaper alternative to Microsoft Office, appealing to users who don’t need all the advanced features of Office. TurboTax provides an affordable and easy way to file taxes compared to traditional tax services.
Discrete strategy
This strategy targets jobs that are distinct and separate from mainstream customer needs, like specialized software tools designed specifically for video game developers to address critical but niche aspects of game development. It appeals mainly to customers who find themselves in situations where few or no alternative solutions are available.
Examples: Airport concessions are a prime example. Drinks sold past security checkpoints are often more expensive, and yet people buy them because they have limited options. ATMs in remote locations charge higher fees, but they service people who don’t have easy access to their banks.
Sustaining strategy
The sustaining strategy sits at the center of all the aforementioned strategies and involves making improvements to existing products to keep customer loyalty and market share intact.
While new marketing entrants may find it less effective, it is a common choice for established companies looking to keep their customer base satisfied.
Examples: Just about every product that makes things a bit better or more affordable without feeling cheap. Many smartphone models follow this strategy, with each new version offering slightly better performance or new features.
Jobs to Be Done framework steps
It’s easy to get lost in the details of the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework and forget the main goal—to better understand your users and what they want to achieve with your product.
The key to winning innovation is finding the right market, understanding what customers need, identifying different groups with unmet needs, and offering solutions that do the job better.
Here are some practical steps to make the most of the JTBD framework:
1. Identify user jobs to be done
Talk to your customers to understand what they’re trying to achieve, the problems they’re facing, or the pain points they want to overcome. If you’re developing a new product, focus on areas where there aren’t enough solutions to help people reach their goals. For existing products, identify the parts that are most challenging for your customers or where there’s potential for new solutions.
For example, when Slack was first developed, the team noticed how companies struggled with internal communication and realized a major job was improving team collaboration.
You can learn these insights only by observing and talking to your users. User interviews are the ultimate way to do this. You can just hop on a call with your users and ask them everything directly, getting to know their main pain points, problems, needs and wants.
2. Formulate job statements
After identifying the user jobs, the next step is to define them more clearly with job statements. These statements should be concise and capture what the user wants to accomplish.
For example:
“I want to store my files online so that I can access them from any device.”
This simple statement highlights the core job Dropbox fulfills and the desired outcomes for users.
Creating an effective job statement means breaking down the user’s goals into clear, actionable items, and it helps to see things from the user’s perspective. You should also consider the functional and emotional aspects of these jobs. With DropBox, the functional aspect is the fire storage accessibility, while the emotional aspect is the peace of mind of knowing their files are safe and easily retrievable.
What is NOT a Good Job Statement?
What distinguishes a good job statement is its clarity and goal orientation. Here are examples of what not to do when writing one:
- Too vague: “I want to be productive.” This doesn’t specify what the user wants to achieve or how they measure success.
- Too specific: “I want to use Dropbox to store my work files.” This limits the job to a specific product rather than the broader goal of file storage and access.
- Feature-oriented: “I want a file synchronization feature.” – focuses on a specific feature rather than the overall job or outcome the user desires.
A good job statement should avoid these pitfalls and instead focus on the broader goal and desired outcome.
If you can find a way to focus on the user’s needs and outcomes rather than the specific products or features, you will create disruptive new products and services.
3. Evaluate jobs
Following the job statements you’ve created for your users, the next step is to evaluate these tasks to understand how important they are and how satisfied users are with them.
This requires gathering information using different UX research methods:
Surveys: help collect feedback from a larger group of users in a structured way. They can include multiple-choice questions, rating scales, or open-ended questions. We recommend using a survey tool with built-in analytics to make your research easier.
A/B testing: also known as split testing, compares two versions of a product or feature to determine which performs better. This method allows companies like Spotify to experiment with different user interfaces or algorithms for music recommendations.
User interviews: provide qualitative insights by directly engaging with users individually. For example, Spotify conducts interviews to understand how users find new music. They might ask questions like, ‘How do you usually discover new songs?’ to learn user behaviors and challenges faced with the products.
4. Prioritize jobs
Prioritizing which jobs to address first is a simplified path to focusing resources and efforts on the tasks with the greatest impact on user satisfaction and business success. Here’s how you can approach prioritization, using the MosCow and RICE Scoring frameworks:
- RICE Scoring: RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort. It quantifies tasks based on their potential Reach (how many users it affects), Impact (how much it improves user experience or business goals), Confidence (certainty in the estimates), and Effort (resources required to implement). Using RICE scoring, Airbnb, for example, might prioritize jobs that have high Reach (many users book accommodations), Impact (significantly improves user satisfaction), and low Effort (relatively easy to implement).
- MoSCoW Framework: This framework categorizes tasks into Must have, Should have, Could have, and Won’t have. Jobs are ranked according to their criticality. An example of a must-have position at Airbnb would be “booking accommodations,” as this directly supports the company’s primary function of matching accommodations with travelers.
Most products only get part of a job done. The goal is to prioritize all of the important ones so that all efforts can be directed toward achieving the best possible results.
5. Develop solutions for user jobs
The next step in the JTBD framework is to develop solutions that address user needs, and you can approach this process in three simple steps:
- Understand user needs: When you narrow down the key jobs your users must fulfill, you also want to have a deeper understanding of their specific needs and pain points associated with each job.
- The solution development process comes right after, with teams brainstorming potential solutions that align with the identified jobs, such as creating new features, improving existing ones, or even developing new products that better meet user expectations. When Uber identified a key job for their users as “getting a reliable ride quickly,” they developed features like real-time tracking and estimated arrival times to tackle the user’s needs for transparency and reliability when using their service.
- The final step is to implement a process of iterative testing and refinement to ascertain the effectiveness of the solutions.
With a deep understanding of the customer’s JTBP, the process of innovation becomes a lot more predictable.
6. Test with target users
Testing with target users helps to evaluate how your product performs in the market and how successfully it solves users’ problems. Various testing methods, such as beta testing, usability tests and are used to address any gaps in the user’s to-do list.
Top companies, like Google, frequently roll out beta versions of their software to a specific user base. Before releasing the product to the general public, they use the feedback to enhance features and correct bugs.
The easiest way to find out how users interact with your product and where they encounter issues – is conducting usability testing. With UXtweak you can test the usability of prototypes, websites, mobile apps, and their beta versions.
⬇️ Check out how easy it is in these quick demos:
7. Communicate findings and improve
The final step in the Jobs To Be Done framework after making all the necessary research is to share findings both internally and externally.
Once you have a good sense of where things stand, share your findings with your team. Everyone needs to understand what your customers are saying. Gather stakeholders to address the issues and possibilities for growth and give recommendations on how to work with those.
Based on these recommendations, improve the product to fit users’ needs better, and test again to gather feedback. This ongoing process of closing the feedback loop ensures continuous improvement, helping you stay attuned to users’ needs and ahead of your competitors.
Apple is great at this—they show people how they’ve listened to customer feedback and made improvements, such as “maintaining all-day battery life,” thereby demonstrating a commitment to user-centric innovation.
Wrapping up
The Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) framework is a structured guide for navigating the process involved in delivering products and services needed by customers. Given the large amount of customer data and insights companies take into account daily, the framework provides a convenient way to focus only on what matters, why it matters, and how to implement it.
With these insights, innovation becomes less of a chance and more of a guarantee, and product teams can gain a clear understanding of customer jobs, enabling them to design solutions that meet their needs.
To ensure you understand your users and their needs, conduct research with UXtweak 🐝 We offer a comprehensive set of research tools that help you get to know your users, test your product, and evaluate how well it meets their needs.
