Job Map Template
Use our Job Mapping Template or Career Map to visualize step-by-step what your customer does to achieve their goals. The mapping also highlights opportunities to offer something new versus competitors.
About the Job Map Template
Job mapping deconstructs the steps a customer takes to “hire” a product or service for a job they need to do. Your team’s user experience researchers or product managers can first use the Jobs to Be Done framework to understand why customers “hire” or “fire” your product or service. Job mapping is the next logical step to dig deeper into what customers are trying to do at every step of the process.
The multi-step breakdown also helps teams visualize how customers measure success when they “hire” a product or service to get a job done.
Keep reading to learn more about job mapping.
What is a Job Map
Job Mapping is a staged process that helps organizations better understand what their customers want to do. The mapping also highlights opportunities to offer something new or different from their competitors.
UX researchers and product managers should remind their teams:
Every job is a process, from start to finish, viewed from the customer’s perspective.
The value of mapping out the steps is to critically examine, and improve, each step. Steps may need to be removed, introduced, reshuffled, enabled, or responsibility transferred from customer to organization. Job mapping helps teams articulate the what, why, and how of these changes.
Job types can change, but what needs to happen from start to finish stays the same.
Every customer is different, but jobs are structured similarly. Customers must figure out what they need to do the job. First, they'll find any necessary inputs, then prepare each part of the job and where it will happen, follow through on tasks, make changes as needed, then finish the job.
Jobs are different from solutions.
Customers can hire both you and your competitor for different steps in the “jobs to be done” process. Less about solving a problem, jobs are more about improving a product or service offering to pursue new market opportunities.
When to use a job map
A job map can be used whenever the core functional job customers are trying to do must be defined step-by-step. This can help UX researchers determine the ideal outcome and locate challenges or obstacles to making it happen.
The job map role is to help teams take the customer’s perspective (rather than focus on solutions a company offers) and create a simple job statement. A job map is also useful as a stable framework that allows you to find groups of people your product or service should target. For example, regardless of the solution (the how), there will always be people who want to cook lasagna.
Create your own Job Map
Making your own Job Maps is easy. Miro’s whiteboard tool is the perfect canvas to create and share them. Get started by selecting the Job Map Template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Invite your customer to define the characteristics of the job to be done.
Ideally, your customer will name the job to be done before you meet one-on-one. Remind them that it doesn’t have to be emotionally or socially expressed. If they’ve done this by default, that’s okay. Work with them to define the job, not the situation, for instance, “stay updated on world news,” not “wait in line at grocery store.”
Have the customer name inputs and materials needed to get the job done.
Encourage them to draft sticky notes for the steps taken to perform a job. For example, if they’re in planning mode, what do they do? If they need more sticky notes, they can duplicate and edit them.
Help the customer focus on just one part of the job.
Let the customer know that even if they mapped out multiple steps, you need only focus on one. Dig into the desired outcomes and challenges faced for more insight into what impacts the job to be done. There are no wrong answers, so customers shouldn’t spend more than one hour on the exercise.
Brainstorm what you can do to make the process easier.
As a team, review the data the customer has offered across all stages. Confirm what they prioritize, and how they address risks to their time, money, and safety.
Help customers access information to decide if they’re ready to do a job, and offer alternatives to get the job done.
How can the step-by-step job be faster and easier for the customer? Consider changes for better timing, ways to meet demands, and shifting responsibility from customer to organization to lead to a higher financial return on investment.
Get started with this template right now.
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