Created By: Mike Boysen and sourced from the pioneers

Check out the combined work on this topic in PDF form. It includes “Getting Results from Jobs-to-be-Done Interviews” as well as these cheat sheet.

Opening Comment

Don’t worry about fancy, specialized tools. Open a Google Doc (or a Notion page) and use a numbered list to create your job map. That’s what I do. You’re probably going to change it as you think about it and collaborate with others, so make it easy on yourself. Just do it!

If you're using Notion, I've given you the ability to duplicate this page so you can add it to your own repository

Same holds true for outcomes. There is no reason you need a fancy tool or database (except for Notion). Use the same Google Doc.

If you need a visual map, insert an inline Google Drawing or create a map in some other tool and paste it into your doc; but don’t waste your time until you’ve finalized your map.

Structure of the “Job Statement”

In order to promote consistency, and a stable view of the market, a universal standard has been developed for describing a job-to-be-done. Using this standard, we’ll use the following example of a job statement throughout the document to make it more readable, and hopefully more understandable.

I selected a core job which also has a context. You don’t have to do this. However, I considered the fact that a music enthusiast who wants to listen to music while out for a run has complexities that other contexts don’t. This means there is a likelihood that further hidden segmentation centered-on unmet needs can be discovered through quantitative analysis.

Common verbs associated with jobs are:

• Achieve

• Allow

• Confirm

• Coordinate

• Determine

• Develop

• Discover

• Ensure

• Experience

• Find

• Fix

• Get

• Help

• Identify

• Improve

• Keep

• Make

• Obtain

• Plan

• Prepare

• Prevent

• Protect

• Provide

• Relieve

• Remember

• Remove

• Share

• Stay

• Stop

• Teach

• Understand

• Update

• Verify

Discover the job executor

Before you begin looking for jobs, you need to narrow your focus to a single job executor (think of this as the end user.) In this case, a “music enthusiast.” It could just as easily be an orthopedic surgeon.

UPDATE: In fact, you can start with the job and may find that there are many ways to describe the job executor. Electricians cut wood in a straight line, as do carpenters, roofers, plumbers, etc. These are all different trades, and therefore we name the job executor Tradesmen. When getting breakfast on the go, we can generally describe this group as Commuters, when studying people who are commuting to work in the morning.

Discover the job

Once we know that we’ll be studying music enthusiasts, we can begin by identifying the job they are trying to get done. We can hypothesize that they want to listen to music. But, that could be somewhat broad. By asking more questions we can begin to understand some of the contexts in which they listen to music. We can start by asking them a question:

• What products and services do you currently use to “Listen to music while out for a run”? [list the solutions]
  1. Solution 1
  2. Solution 2
  3. Solution 3
  4. ...
  5. Solution n

We can list these solutions to help us build our base of information

Discover why each solution is hired