Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) for Product Managers

No Product Management method is universally going to get you out of trouble. But The Jobs To Be Done Framework (JTBD, for short) is different.

Unfortunately, discovering your JTBD is easier said than done. Many Product Managers struggle to find a Customer Jobs that can help them in their Product Development because they fall short of understanding its true meaning. It's not just about finding out which words fit best in a "When… I want to… So I can…" format. It's about discovering who your customer wants to be at the end of your solution. Because for a JTBD to be truly useful, your customer must grow and perceive a change at the end of the business. 

So, we decided to end all PMs suffering and develop a template to help teams find out what their customer’s ultimate JTBD is.

You can use it by following the steps below:

1. Customer Interview Prep: Focus on asking the right questions. Begin by writing down all of the ways you can phrase the following questions: a. What exactly is the Job your customer is hiring you to do? b. What do your consumers consider as competition? b. How do you understand what customers do and don’t value in a solution?

Pro Tip: Categorize your items in "context" and "contrast" to make sure you are helping your customer reveal value.

2. Customer Responses: 👉 Conduct your customer interviews 👉 Go back to the board 👉 Extract the most important parts 👉 Write them all down on sticky notes 👉 Bundle them if they contain repetitive answers or are referring to the same thing

3. Categorizing Insights: Compare and contrast all the responses. Then ask yourself, "What do these answers have (or what do they not have) in common?" This will help you pinpoint the most valuable insights extracted from the interviews. Paste all of them in different sticky notes.

Pro Tip: Categorize your insights in functional and emotional. Your Customer Job will most likely be needing to solve one or both of these areas.

4. Identifying Customer Jobs: Write down your most valuable insights as Job Statements.

5. Potential Matrix: By now, you've probably realized what your biggest JTBD is. If you're still struggling to find the "right" one, an excellent way to decide is using this "potential" matrix. The goal is to make sure that the prime Job you want your customer to solve can make them grow and/or change. To do so, ask yourself: "Is this Job going to make my customer grow?" and "Will this Job be able to transform my customer's life?"

Hint: You want your ultimate JTBD to be in the upper right corner.

Now that you've found the Job with the most growth and transformative potential, you can write it all down in the "Main JTBD" slot. Make sure you define the correct context, Job, and desired outcome by following this structure: When I_______ I want to ________ So I can __________.