Jobs to Be Done
This is a collection of plays for working out what progress customers are actually trying to make, and for letting that shape product decisions. Ten plays, all drawn from the published JTBD literature.
Jobs to Be Done
Ten plays for finding the progress customers are trying to make
The plays come from the published JTBD literature
Ten plays, each with an instance from Christensen, Moesta, Ulwick, and others.
A switch is a contest between four forces
Push of the current situationPull of the new solutionAnxiety about the changeHabit of the present
Most teams only add pull. Several plays work on the other three.
Find the job in what people do
Interview the switch: walk recent switchers back through what actually happenedUncover the emotional and social jobs: probe what people felt and who was watchingWatch the workaround: treat improvised hacks as the most honest signal of demand
Define the market by the job people are doing
State the job without the product: verb, object, and context, true before the product existedSegment by struggling moment: group customers by the situation they are inName the real competition: list everything people hire instead, including doing nothingTarget non-consumption: design for the barrier that keeps people out
Let the job settle what opinion cannot
Score the outcomes before the roadmap: fund what is important and poorly servedLower the barriers to the switch: remove anxiety and habit instead of adding more pullAnchor strategy on the stable job: judge each new technology as a candidate hire for the old job
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Present
All slides
Discover the job
Define the market
Decide with the job
Changelog
2026-07-21. Grew from three plays to ten, all drawn from the published literature with sources marked. The ten-play threshold is met, so the flat list gains three groupings and nothing else.
2025-06-21. Initial version. Three plays drawn from the published literature, with sources marked.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 .