How product managers can leverage the jobs-to-be-done framework to make better product decisions

1. How to “Know” What Your Customers
Really Want?
Pandith Jantakahalli

2. Why Jobs-to-be-Done?
• User or customer’s lens for uncovering
– Jobs or outcomes they are trying to achieve while
hiring your product
– Causes for hiring your product
– Situations, motivations, triggers, and considerations
while hiring your product

3. “When you identify what people truly
use your product to accomplish, you
protect yourself from competition”
Clayton Christensen

4. Jobs: Provides Clarity on Competition
• Same job (overcoming a boring commute)
fulfilled by different products
Image Source: Intercom.io blog

5. Jobs: Provides Clarity on Competition
• Products in the same product category
fulfilling different jobs
Treat Breakfast on the go

6. “Identifying with a product category is
outsourcing your strategy to the past”
Ryan Singer

7. Jobs: Provides Clarity on Purpose
• Jobs helps you identify what causes people
to buy your products
“The fact that you are 18-35 years old
with a college degree does not cause
you to buy a product. It may be
correlated with the decision, but it
does not cause it”
Clayton Christensen

8. Typical Conversations: Product Focused
• What your product does?
– (What can we do to improve our product?)
Drill holes Information on
temperature,
humidity, rain
Send, receive
documents

9. How to Identify Jobs?
• Why people use your product?
Hang a painting What should I
wear, carry an
umbrella, by
when should I
reach home?
Get signatures on a
document

10. You’ve Identified the Job, What Next?
• Understand which situations are causing
them to hire your product?
• What aspects of the current solution are
they unhappy or struggling with?
• What criteria are they applying in
choosing between solutions?

11. Jobs are Timeless
• Customers do not just buy products, they
just switch from something else
• Customers do not just leave a product,
they switch to something else
• Dimensions or hiring criteria change over
time

12. How to Uncover Causality?
• One of the methods to uncover causality of
purchase is to conduct JTBD interviews
with people who have
– Purchased your product recently
– Fired your product recently

13. “When dealing with people,
remember you are not dealing with
creatures of logic, but with creatures
of emotion”
Dale Carnegie

14. What to Focus on in JTBD Interviews?
Adapted from the Re-Wired Group, Ash Maurya’s Blog Post
Push of a situation
Make progress /
something better
Magnetism of the new solution
What will my life look like?
Anxiety of the new solution
Am I making the right choice?
Habit of the present
What is holding them back?

15. Scope of JTBD Interviews
Deciding
Making trade-offs
based on hiring
criteria
Energy
Active looking
Spend effort in
seeking a solution
Passive looking
Know you need to
make a change
Time
Switch/Buying
Consuming
Using the product
Satisfaction
Evaluation of product
against hiring criteria
First Thought Consumption
Adapted from the Re-Wired Group

16. Post Interview Analysis
• Best done as a team, who have participated or
listened to the interview
– Do each of the below steps individually and then
discuss as a group
• List struggling moments in current situation
• Identify dimensions that are valuable to the
customer
• Identify trade-offs made while making a
decision

17. Post Interview Analysis
• List emotions experienced, “social” aspects
• List anxieties and habits that hold them
back
• Name the jobs
• Build hypothesis on causality
• Test your hypothesis in subsequent
interviews

18. Summary
Think More About
Alternatives for
achieving the
same
outcomes/jobs
Think Less About
Competitors in
your product
category
Situations, and
struggling
moments with
current solution
Personas of
users
Emotions and
behaviors
demonstrated
while buying
your product
Rational
reasons for
purchasing
your product
Why they use
your product
What your
product does

19. Takeaways for PMs
• Consider prioritizing based on hiring criteria
and their relative importance
• Identify attributes that are important but are
under served (low satisfaction)
• Understand comparable anchors that
prospects while evaluating your product
• What can you do to reduce anxiety and help
prospective customers to overcome existing
habits and behaviors?
• How can you improve messaging to speak to
situations and emotions?

20. “Questions are places in your mind
where answers fit. If you haven’t
asked the question, the answer has
nowhere to go ”
Clayton Christensen
Questions?

21. What Next?
Want to practice JTBD interviews?
Google Hangout Session: 13-Sep-2014, 11 AM
(8 Slots Only + 1 Person who recently made a purchase)
Twitter: jppandith Email: jppandith@gmail.com
Bangalore JTBD Meetup Group
Blog: https://medium.com/@jppandith

22. Sources / Acknowledgements
• Re-Wired Group (Bob Moesta, Chris Spiek)
– www.jobstobedone.org
– Resource page, JTBD radio, JTBD handbook
– Udemy Course
• Clayton Christensen – HBR articles, milkshake video
• Alan Klement, and the Jobs-to-be-done collection that he curates on
Medium
• 37 Signals Team (Ryan Singer in particular)
• Intercom.io Team (Des Traynor in particular)
• Photos belong to their respective copyright owners

23. About
Pandith Jantakahalli
Blog:
https://medium.com/@jppandith
Twitter: jppandith
Email: jppandith at gmail.com