Customers & Research

How is JTBD different from features, personas, or user needs?

A starting point

Personas describe who; JTBD describes the progress they're trying to make and the struggle that pushes them to switch. Features are your answer; the job is their question. Anchor on the job and your features stop being a wishlist and start being a solution to something real.

Go deeper

Read

📄 Article
Free Beginner

Clay Christensen's Milkshake Marketing

From HBS Working Knowledge by Clayton Christensen (via Harvard Business School) ~8 min read

Why we picked it

The primary-source telling of the milkshake story, the single most memorable illustration of Jobs to Be Done, straight from Christensen and HBS. The best on-ramp to JTBD.

  • Customers 'hire' products to do a job in a specific situation
  • The milkshake was hired to make a boring commute bearable, not just for taste
  • Understand the job, and the right product improvements become obvious
  • Demographics miss the point, situation and job drive purchases
Open library.hbs.edu →
📖 Book
Free Intermediate

When Coffee and Kale Compete: Become great at making products people will buy

From jtbd.info / alanklement.com by Alan Klement ~230 pages

Why we picked it

The most practitioner-friendly deep dive into JTBD, with interviews and case studies on applying it to real products. Free to read and written by a leading JTBD practitioner.

  • A job is the struggle to turn a current situation into a preferred one
  • Seemingly unrelated products (coffee vs kale) compete for the same job
  • Study switching moments, the push and pull that make people change
  • Attach value to what the product does for the customer, not to features
Open alanklement.com →

People also ask

What does 'jobs to be done' actually mean? People don't buy products, they 'hire' them to make progress in a specific situation, the famous milkshake was hired to make a boring commute beara... Beginner 2 resources → How do I actually uncover the job my customers are hiring my product for? Interview people who recently switched to or bought something in your space and reconstruct the timeline: what triggered the search, what they used... Intermediate 3 resources → Who are my real competitors once I think in jobs to be done? Anything the customer currently 'hires' to get the same job done, including a spreadsheet, a WhatsApp group, a competitor, or doing nothing at all.... Intermediate 3 resources → How do I turn a job to be done into product and messaging decisions? Write the job as a struggling-moment statement ('when I ___, I want to ___, so I can ___') and use it as the filter for what to build and how to pi... Advanced 2 resources →