Jobs to be Done (JTBD)
Jobs to be Done (JTBD) is a theory of customer behavior that says people do not buy products for their own sake: they "hire" them to make progress in a particular situation. The "job" is that progress. Studying the job, rather than demographics or feature requests, helps teams understand why customers choose a product, switch to another one, or stop using it.
How Jobs to be Done Works
The core idea, popularized by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, is that the circumstance matters more than the customer's characteristics. Two very different people can hire the same product for the same job, and one person can hire different products for different jobs in the same day.
A job has more than one dimension:
- Functional: the practical task, such as getting to work or paying a supplier.
- Emotional: how the person wants to feel, such as confident or less anxious.
- Social: how they want to be seen by others.
Several schools of practice build on the theory:
- Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI). Tony Ulwick of Strategyn defines a job as the task, goal, or objective a customer is trying to accomplish, and breaks it into a job map of steps. Customers judge each step by "desired outcomes," measurable criteria such as how quickly or reliably something gets done. Surveys then show which outcomes are important but poorly served, the idea behind opportunity scoring.
- Switch interviews and the forces of progress. Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek interview people who recently switched to or away from a product and reconstruct the decision as a timeline. Four forces explain the switch: the push of the current situation, the pull of the new solution, anxiety about the new choice, and the habit of the present. People switch when push and pull outweigh anxiety and habit.
- Job stories. A format first described on the Intercom blog that writes requirements around situations: "When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome]." It is an alternative to the role-based user story.
Why Jobs to be Done Matters
JTBD changes who you think your competitors are. Christensen's best-known example comes from a fast-food chain that found many of its milkshakes were bought in the morning by commuters who wanted something filling and slow to eat on a long drive. For that job, the milkshake competed with bagels and bananas, not with other milkshakes. Seeing the real competition opens different product and positioning choices.
It also gives teams a more stable target. Products and technologies change quickly, while the underlying job changes slowly. A team that understands the job can judge a new feature by whether it helps customers get that job done better, faster, or with less effort.
Finally, JTBD gives research a clear focus. Interviews that reconstruct a real purchase or switch reveal motivations that feature-preference surveys usually miss. For a sequence that moves from segment to job to evidence before any feature is scoped, see initial product scoping for technical founders.
Jobs to be Done Example
A team selling accounting software to small businesses assumes customers buy it to "do bookkeeping." Switch interviews with recent buyers tell a different story. Most bought it in the weeks after a stressful tax deadline or after their accountant complained about messy records. The push was worry about the next deadline. The pull was the promise that the accountant would have everything they need. The anxiety holding others back was the fear of moving years of spreadsheets into a new system.
The job is closer to "keep me ready for my accountant without having to think about it." The team adds a guided spreadsheet import to reduce the anxiety and a one-click way to share records with an accountant to strengthen the pull. Its marketing shifts from listing features to describing the progress customers were hiring the product for.
Jobs to be Done vs. Personas
A persona describes a type of user. A job describes the progress someone is trying to make in a situation. The two work well together: the persona tells you who you are designing for, and the job tells you what they are trying to achieve and what they will compare your product against.