Software Growth

JTBD (Jobs to be done)

Jobs to be done is a framework that explains why people buy by focusing on the progress they want to make, instead of on who they are or what features exist.

Jobs to be done (JTBD) is a way to understand customers by the job they hire a product to do. It was developed by Clayton Christensen and colleagues. Instead of asking "who is our customer?" you ask "what is this person trying to get done, in what situation, and what are they using now?" For a founder it replaces guessing at features with a clearer view of why anyone switches.

The core idea

The Harvard Business Review article "Know Your Customers' Jobs to Be Done" by Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan argues that companies have more customer data than ever yet their innovation still mostly fails. The authors say that is because teams focus on product attributes and customer profiles, not on the reasons customers buy. They report that 94 percent of executives surveyed were dissatisfied with their organization's innovation performance. When you understand the job, they argue, innovation becomes much more predictable.

Demographics versus jobs

Two customers with identical profiles may want opposite things, while two very different people may hire the same product for the same reason. A 25-year-old freelancer and a 55-year-old agency owner might both use your time-tracking tool because "when a client questions my invoice, I need proof of the hours". That shared situation is more useful for positioning than age or job title.

How Intercom applies it in software

Des Traynor describes how Intercom uses JTBD: rather than segmenting by customer type, the team identifies specific instances of work customers need done, writes down the core jobs it serves, and checks product decisions against them. He also advises focusing on verbs, not nouns, because calling yourself a "help desk" brings along every assumption of that category, and measuring real consumption, since "sign up is not consumption" (Jobs-to-be-Done Radio). Intercom also limits its messaging to jobs it does well.

How to find the job

  1. Interview recent buyers, and recent cancelers.
  2. Ask about the moment they started looking: what happened, what were they doing, what had they tried?
  3. Capture the situation, the desired outcome and the alternatives.
  4. Write jobs in the form "When [situation], I want to [action], so I can [outcome]."
  5. Group similar stories. Three to five jobs usually cover most customers.

Where JTBD helps

  • Positioning: your real competitors are whatever else gets the job done, including a spreadsheet. See positioning.
  • Prioritization: features that do not serve a core job are candidates to skip, which helps against feature creep.
  • Onboarding: guide new users toward the job that brought them.

Limits

JTBD is a research lens, not a formula. It gives you no number to track. Teams also overcomplicate it with long job maps when a handful of interviews would do. For a bootstrapped team, five customer interviews and a one-page list of jobs is plenty, and it pairs well with an ideal customer profile.

Related terms

Sources

Back to the SaaS glossary