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Author : Arnould Joseph – Product Marketing Manager
Product success depends on understanding the moment a customer decides to act. Features and positioning matter, but the real leverage lies in knowing what triggers that decision and what outcome the customer is trying to achieve.
Jobs To Be Done concentrates on that point of decision. It looks at the situation a person is in and the progress they want to make. When that progress is clearly understood, product discovery becomes more grounded, prioritisation becomes clearer, and messaging aligns naturally with user intent. This is why Jobs To Be Done has become a core framework in modern product management.
Key Takeaways:
The Jobs To Be Done Framework is a model that uses results to describe behaviour in a customer-focused approach. A job represents the progress a person wants to make when a particular situation arises.
People choose products because those products help them move forward in a way that fits their context. Over time, they continue or abandon that choice based on how well the product supports that progress.
Most jobs involve multiple dimensions working together.
Products that acknowledge all of these tend to feel more intuitive and relevant.
The foundations of Jobs To Be Done stem from Outcome-Driven Innovation, developed by Tony Ulwick. His work focused on identifying the outcomes customers care about and evaluating how well existing solutions satisfy those outcomes.
The framework gained wider recognition through the research of Clayton Christensen, who described how customers buy products to make progress in their lives. His study demonstrated that products fail frequently as teams do not understand what customers are actually trying to accomplish, as they are looking at solutions rather than the underlying problem.
With the maturity of product management, Jobs To Be Done became a realistic approach to bridging strategy, discovery, and execution with an actual customer intent.
The impact of Jobs To Be Done extends beyond research interviews. It influences how teams think, prioritise, and align around customer progress.
The Jobs To Be Done framework works by grounding product decisions in customer progress rather than assumptions. It starts with identifying the job itself, defined as the progress a customer wants to make without reference to any specific solution.
Once the job is clear, attention shifts to context. Jobs surface in situations shaped by timing, environment, and constraints. The same person may approach the same job differently depending on these factors.
As teams map how progress unfolds, they uncover moments where customers feel friction, uncertainty, or delay. These moments often indicate where existing solutions fall short.
Several elements work together at this stage.
This foundation ensures that solutions emerge from real needs rather than internal assumptions.
The power of Jobs To Be Done is best understood through real product contexts. The examples below illustrate how jobs remain stable even when solutions change.
Productivity software – Users are often trying to maintain control over responsibilities while managing competing demands and limited attention.
Consumer platforms – Products are frequently chosen to support emotional needs such as relaxation, engagement, or connection during specific moments.
Career and education products – The job often involves reducing uncertainty and enabling confident decisions with limited information.
Across these categories, the job remains stable even as tools and interfaces evolve.
When using this framework, teams typically run into a few common problems.
Recognising these patterns early helps teams apply Jobs To Be Done with greater discipline and confidence.
As teams gain experience, their use of Jobs To Be Done becomes more deliberate and structured. The framework moves from insight generation toward sustained decision making.
Several practices typically emerge at this stage:
These practices help teams move from insight to execution without losing clarity.
Jobs To Be Done enhances marketing and growth through messaging and aligning with the progress customers desire to achieve. When intentional communication is applied instead of a functional one, positioning is better and the process of onboarding becomes more natural. This alignment increases over time, leading to activation, retention and sustainable growth since the product experience stays connected to why users chose it in the first place.
“Customers do not buy products. They hire them to make progress in their lives.” ~ Clayton Christensen
It explains why people choose products by focusing on the progress they want to make in a given situation.
Yes. It is commonly applied to workflow-driven and multi-stakeholder decisions.
Through interviews, surveys, and outcome-focused analysis.
