The ultimate guide to JTBD

Bob Moesta, co-creator of the Jobs to Be Done framework alongside Clay Christensen, is a long-time product builder, startup founder, and adjunct lecturer who has worked on thousands of products and services. The conversation covers the core premise of Jobs to Be Done, how to interview customers to uncover the forces driving switching behavior, how the framework applies to sales, roadmaps, and new product creation, and common misconceptions about the approach.

01Key learnings

• Customers hire products to make progress in a context; understanding the context and desired outcome matters more than simply identifying a pain point.
• Start from the struggling moment that causes demand, since a product alone does not create demand; use those moments to guide roadmaps beyond the first 90 to 120 days.
• Model switching as forces: push and pull drive change, while anxiety of the new and habit of the present hold people back, and friction is often easier to reduce than features are to add.
• Interview 10 to 12 people who recently made the switch, asking for their story rather than using a rigid discussion guide, and cluster the stories into pathways instead of segments.
• Don't trust what customers say they will do; look at what they actually did, since many people say they want features like Gantt charts but do not switch because of them.
• Design the sales process around the buyer's stage in their buying journey (passive looking, active looking, deciding) rather than around how the company wants to sell.
• Identify the trade-offs customers make and align your product's trade-offs with theirs, since many failures come from trade-offs the customer did not agree with.
• Study the competitive set from the demand side: competitors are whatever people would fire when they hire your product, which can differ greatly from the obvious product category.

02Frameworks mentioned

Summary and takeaways written by PM Atlas; quotes are short excerpts. © the original author.