Last week in a comment on my post, Pierre mentioned my maniacal (his words 😄 ) focus on the Jobs To Be Done (or JTBD) framework, a methodology that I fell in love with and inspiring everything we do at ForecaaS Software Inc.. You’ll likely see me explore this in future posts as well but I thought I’d start with what I learned and why I think it’s such a useful concept.
First, I highly recommend reading Tony Ulwick’s “Jobs To Be Done. Theory to Practice”, it’s the definitive guide to the framework authored by its originator who describes it as a perspective for “outcome-driven innovation”. Another super important and great read is Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta’s “The Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook”.
The basic premise is that customers buy solutions or goods to answer a *struggle* in their lives aka get a job done. They will be on the lookout for something that can speak to this struggle and solve it, so that they can live a better life. If you can collect and organize those jobs with their desired outcomes and corresponding KPIs, you’ll be able to understand what would make your product the perfect hire for each struggle and craft your product accordingly.
In my world of RevOps, when we speak to CFOs of SaaS-based or subscription-based businesses, one of their common struggles is to produce revenue metrics for the board, consistently and accurately. (if you struggle with this, you’re not alone!)
When we speak to other members of RevOps, one of their jobs-to-be-done is to verify, analyze and compile revenue data in a way that is sustainable and usable to the CFO and/or other C-Suite members.
Applying this framework internally allows us to guide our product roadmap through an hyper-focused lens on getting those jobs done as efficiently as possible, to help avoid:
1️⃣ Random feature development that are trendy or competitor-driven but irrelevant to our actual users
2️⃣ Low impact sales and marketing material that doesn’t resonate with prospects because it’s not specific to their needs
3️⃣ Awkward and unengaging demos that don’t properly align with what prospects are looking for us to do for them
and ultimately we were able to create a set of solutions for which we know exactly: 1. what their jobs are, 2. how and why they get hired, and 3. how they deliver the promise to our customers.
This is what turns prospects to customers and customers to – dare I say, maniacal fans. 😉
For more on the JTBD framework, Business of Software has an excellent resource site: https://businessofsoftware.org/playlists/jobs-to-be-done/playlist/
