Build Products That Solve Real Problems With This Lightweight JTBD Framework

Build Products That Solve Real Problems With This Lightweight JTBD Framework

Drawing on her experiences building products at Lumosity, Oculus, and Facebook's New Product Experimentation group, Sunita Mohanty shares a lightweight "jobs-to-be-done" framework for early-stage product teams, along with templates and go-to-market tactics.

In my role leading product teams as a part of Facebook's New Product Experimentation, we’re focused on that hazy “0 to 1” stage of building, where ideas are unproven and products are in their most nascent stages. My job is to distill the complicated unknowns of a big, disruptive vision into clear, actionable steps for my teams and increase our chances of finding product-market fit at every step. This focus on taking big swings while still pursuing concrete steps toward building valuable products is the direct result of my previous experiences — I’ve felt the pain that comes from building products that fail to tackle a clear problem firsthand.

Now in my work as an angel investor and advisor, I see teams run into this very same brick wall. As I help them prioritize early product and go-to-market efforts, I often find myself dishing out the same advice: Do the work to make sure you are building a product that people will actually find valuable. That requires an incredibly deep understanding of the user, their hopes, and their motivations, instead of taking the easier path of operating off of untested assumptions.

There’s a range of philosophies out there on how to avoid this trap and better approach early stage customer development, but in both my advisory roles and in my day job, I've come to rely on one framework: JTBD (jobs-to-be-done).

I first read Clayton Christensen’s approach to JTBD while in grad school at Stanford, but it didn’t really sink in. After stumbling upon it again years later at Facebook, I’ve since found enormous value in employing a version of this framework as we built Oculus social features, Facebook Preventive Health, and more recently, Tuned.

JTBD is by no means a new way of thinking. But it can be confusing to get started with, since it’s heavy on the corporate strategy jargon and has been reinvented many times over. A quick Google search reveals a bevy of confusing terms, from the debate over jobs-as-progress and jobs-as-activities, or the competing visualizations of maps and hierarchies. I’ve also found that JTBD has a bit of a consulting-esque vibe and seems less vision-driven, which can be off-putting to many product-driven founders.

If you’re looking for a deep-dive into the jobs-to-be-done theory and how others apply it, I recommend reading through this primer from The Christensen Institute, this article from Harvard Business Review, Alan Klement’s overview of two different interpretations and Intercom’s guide. But if you’re looking for something a bit more lightweight and accessible for startup product teams, read on for my simplified approach to JTBD.

WHY YOU CAN’T JUST WING IT: THE CASE FOR USING A FRAMEWORK TO UNDERSTAND YOUR CUSTOMERS

Do you find your team is unable to align on what matters most about your product as you’re starting out? Or that you’ve worked hard to bring something to market that you were all excited by, but you’re not getting traction with users? Founders, early-stage teams, and even later-stage product orgs run into these problems time and time again. The bottom line is that you can very easily build something, but to increase your chance of creating something that is solving a real problem you need to be more rigorous in your approach.

Anyone can build products. Not everyone can build products that solve a real problem and land product-market fit.

More specifically, here are three common problems I see both early- and late-stage product teams running into that indicate a framework might be useful:

ENTER THE JOBS TO BE DONE FRAMEWORK: WHAT IT IS AND HOW IT TAPS INTO WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT

Whether you’re a product manager innovating within a larger company, or building a brand new early-stage product at a startup, the JTBD framework works to create better, non-obvious insights about your audience. Ultimately, the core value of this framework is that it provides an approach to gathering an understanding of who your user is, and what their motivations and hopes are.

While JTBD has been used for 30 years in industries making physical goods, it’s relatively newer in software building circles. The theory of jobs to be done centers around understanding customer behavior and underlying rationale for making choices.

The idea is that innovators win by resolving a consumer’s struggle and satisfying their unmet aspiration. Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt explained it this way: "People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!"

BUILDING BETTER PRODUCTS STARTS WITH A GOOD JTBD STATEMENT — HERE’S YOUR ROADMAP

A jobs to be done statement concisely describes the way a particular product or service fits into a person's life to help them achieve a particular task, goal, or outcome that was previously unachievable. When crafted well, these statements create clarity around what doesn’t exist today and what product builders can focus on to innovate.

Why you need one:

A good, crisp JTBD statement captures underlying motivations, triggers and context for the problems your user faces. This statement can be foundational for your entire product and GTM planning, from focusing your PRD or product spec, to identifying your channels and marketing messages.

Put in the legwork: A template and 4-step process for crafting a standout JTBD statement

Before putting pen to paper, lean on these guidelines:

To put that into practice, here’s a JBTD statement template that I find helpful:

With those principles and end goal in the background, follow these four steps to gather all the info you’ll need to fill out your JTBD template:

1. Start by defining your audience clearly.

Think about the defining characteristics that help you develop a crystal-clear image in your head of your audience.

2. Ground yourself in market research.

Understand as much as possible about this audience’s behavior: what they currently are using to solve this specific problem and where they feel the most pain in the customer experience.

3. Talk to your users.

Using surveys and interviews, get a firsthand account about your user’s mindset and decision process. Try to understand underlying motivations and barriers.

4. Prioritize.

From user interviews, look for themes that emerge in jobs to be done. You can also run surveys to rank the importance of jobs for better understanding of the market opportunity.

JTBDs IRL: Examples to bring this framework to life

Discord:

Peloton:

Segment:

Mutiny:

Tuned:

NOW WHAT? HOW STARTUPS CAN PUT JTBD INTO PRACTICE

JTBD isn’t a static statement, nor is it a one-time exercise suited for the entirety of a company’s lifespan. If used well, it can continually focus on what matters most as a north star and increase the odds of finding product-market fit.

How to incorporate JTBD into the product org:

You can weave it throughout your product team’s process by using JTBD to inform your value props, PRDs and go-to-market tactics. Here’s a quick recap of actions:

How to revisit your JTBD statements:

Periodically do interviews to understand how your customers currently use your product. You can specifically ask people if the product is solving the job you intend it to tackle, allowing you to validate your understanding.

Ultimately, building products people love requires curiosity, deep listening, and truth-seeking to make sure the problems you think you should solve are truly real pain points.