What is a job to be done

Feature lists and demographic segments answer the wrong question. People do not buy a quarter-inch drill because they love drills; they buy it because they need a quarter-inch hole. Jobs to be done (JTBD) pushes that idea further: in a circumstance, a person is trying to make progress — and they "hire" a product (or a workaround) to do that job.

Problems are often symptoms; the job is the progress the person wants. See problems worth solving. Strategy later hangs on a clear job — see product strategy.

The big idea

Clayton Christensen's milkshake example: a fast-food chain wanted to sell more shakes. Classic research asked demographic "milkshake drinkers" what attributes they wanted — thicker, sweeter, chunkier — and sales did not move. Researchers then asked: what job are you hiring that milkshake to do?

Morning buyers were often alone, buying only the shake, rushing. The job was roughly: make my long, boring commute interesting, keep one hand busy and keep me full until mid-morning — without making a mess in work clothes. Competitors for that job were not other shakes: bananas (gone too fast), bagels (messy, two hands), donuts (crumbs, guilt), nothing (boredom). The shake won on viscosity and cup-holder fit.

Afternoon buyers hired shakes for a different job — a tame treat for kids — which wanted different attributes (thin enough to finish quickly). Same product category; different jobs; different competitors; different design changes. Improve the morning job (make it even slower and more interesting) and you might hurt the afternoon job.

Jobs are rarely only functional.

• Functional — the practical progress: get full, file taxes, move money, deploy code.
• Emotional — how I want to feel: less anxious, competent, relieved.
• Social — how I am perceived: responsible parent, modern team, serious professional.

A payments API's functional job might be "accept cards reliably." The emotional job for the developer is "not get paged at 2am." The social job might be "signal that our startup is production-grade." Docs and status pages sell the last two as much as the endpoint does.

Hiring Notion vs a pile of Google Docs: functional = "find and update our process docs." Emotional = "feel less scattered." Social = "look like a serious product org to new hires." A feature that only improves search may lose to templates and identity fit with worse search.

Common mistakes

• Segmenting by persona or product category. Segment by job and circumstance.
• Ignoring emotional and social dimensions. Cold products lose to weaker tech with better identity fit.
• Smuggling a feature into the job. "When I click Export, I want a CSV" is a spec, not a job.

Check yourself

Morning commuters hire a shake against bananas and bagels. What are you competing with?

Anything that does the commute job — including nothing. Not other shakes.

A payments API has five-nines uptime and hostile docs. Which job is failing?

The developer's emotional and social jobs: don't get paged, don't look reckless.

Key takeaways

• Customers hire products to make progress in a circumstance — the job.
• Jobs have functional, emotional and social dimensions.
• Same product, different jobs, different competitors. Design for one job at a time.

Further learning

Clayton Christensen explaining the milkshake story.

Next, why people do or don't switch: forces of progress.