This book dives deep into Customer Jobs theory and Jobs To Be Done. Essentially, rather than a product solving a person's problem, if you think of it from the customer's perspective, they are hiring your product to do a job for them. The goal of any job someone hires a product for is to improve their life.
Through both diving into the concepts as well as case studies, Alan effectively cements home what this framework of thinking about building products is and how important it is to know what job your customers are hiring your product for.
Contents
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Foreword
Origin of Customer Jobs Theory
Beyond Product Attribute Quality as Value
An Early Example
JTBD Theory and Innovation Success
Alan’s Work and What’s Next
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1 Challenges, Hope, and Progress
Challenges
Hope
The Progress You Can Make with Customer Jobs
How to Be Successful with Customer Jobs and This Book
About Me
Abandon Every MBA, All You Who Enter
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2 What is a Job to be Done (JTBD)?
Improve Your Life-Situation; Become More Than You Are
A Job to be Done Defined
Products Enable Customers to Get A Job Done
What Isn’t A Job to be Done
Where Does Customer Jobs Theory Come From?
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3 What Are the Principles of Customer Jobs?
Principles of Customer Jobs
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4 Case Study: Dan and Clarity
What’s the JTBD?
Put It to Work
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5 Case Study: Anthony and Form Theatricals
What’s The JTBD?
Put It to Work
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6 Case Study: Morgan and YourGrocer
hat’s The JTBD?
Put It to Work
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7 The Forces of Progress
Forces That Oppose Each Other
Unpacking Demand Generation
Push and Pull Shape The JTBD
Unpacking Demand Reduction
Put It to Work
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8 When You Define Competition Wrong
Too “Kool” For School?
Why Did The chotuKool Flop?
The Mainframe Versus the PC
Don’t Be Fooled by Randomness
Put It to Work
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9 Case Study: Omer and Transcendent Endeavors
What’s the JTBD?
Put It to Work
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10 Case Study: Justin and Product People Club
What’s the JTBD?
Put It to Work
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11 Case Study: Ash and Lean Stack
What’s the JTBD?
Put It to Work
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12 The System of Progress
Why Study Systems and The System of Progress? I
nterdependencies Between Customers and Producers
The System’s Four Main Parts
The Forces of Progress That Power the System Of Progress
16 Appendix: Know the Two — Very — Different Interpretations of Jobs to be Done
Two Models: Jobs-As-Progress; Jobs-As-Activities
Do Goals Vs. Be Goals
Jobs-As-Activities
Jobs-As-Progress
Two Different, Incompatible Models
Challenges in Understanding a Tangled Mess
The Future? Use What’s Helpful. Don’t Assume Anything
References
Quotes
Upgrade your user, not your product. Don’t build better cameras—build better photographers.
—Kathy Sierra
Doctors treat patients successfully because they understand that the pains and discomforts that patients express are not the problems; they represent the patients’ interactions with their own bodies. Similarly, the needs, wants, and desired outcomes that customers express do not represent their problem; they represent interactions between the customer and the system of progress. Therefore, customers’ stated preferences are unreliable and why customers’ “needs” and “wants” keep changing.
“At 37signals [the former name of Basecamp], we’ve been thinking more about why people hire our product—or what people are hiring our product to do.” I remember at the time thinking, Man, I’ve never thought about it like that before.
Keep your mind open to what counts as competition. I recently talked with a woman who told me about switching from her morning coffee to a kale smoothie with a shot of wheatgrass. Who would’ve thought a cup of coffee and a kale smoothie could be competitors?
Questions you should be able to answer after reading this book
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What is a Job to be Done?
A Job to be Done is the process a consumer goes through whenever she aims to transform her existing life-situation into a preferred one, but cannot because there are constraints that stop her.
The Job to be Done is the big picture. It encapsulates why customers buy your product(s).
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When one innovation wins, another loses. Why?
Because a day has only so many minutes, and a customer can use only one product at a time. For example, every day I used to get an espresso from a coffee shop down the street. Two months ago, I bought a Nespresso machine. Now I make my own espressos. The coffee shop has lost my business.
The theory of Customer Jobs and the idea that customers buy a product to complete a Job to be Done, help us understand all the creative destruction around us.
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Once a customer gets a job done, what pushes them to use new products?
When customers make progress (get a job done), new aspirations are often revealed.
The customer's JTBD is part of a system. In Customer Jobs theory, this is called the System of Progress. The system involves the customers, the products, and the innovators.
Some examples of how you have new aspirations once you've gotten a job done:
You buy your first car and enjoy your newfound independence. But now you want some help planning road trips, choosing car insurance, and finding a mechanic whom you can trust.
You buy professional pans and enjoy your increased cooking control. But now you’re curious about new techniques and recipes. You also need to figure out where to store those new pans and how to clean them properly.
My thoughts
This was my first real foray into customer jobs theory (despite it being used at Dropbox). It is really interesting framework to think about product development and your customers. Just having a framework is very helpful relative to trying to figure all this stuff out on your own;
