What is Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD)?

In more depth

The framework is most associated with Clayton Christensen, who argued that customers do not buy products so much as hire them to get a job done — and fire them when something does the job better. A job has functional, emotional and social dimensions: the same purchase can be about saving time, feeling in control and looking competent to colleagues. JTBD research therefore examines the circumstances of switching — what triggered the search, what alternatives were considered, what anxieties held the customer back — rather than cataloguing preferences. Jobs are stable over decades even as solutions change, which makes them a durable foundation for strategy.

Why it matters

Feature lists and personas describe who customers are and what they say they want; jobs explain why they buy. That shift changes what counts as a competitor — a spreadsheet, a consultant or doing nothing can all be hired for the same job — and it anchors prioritisation in causes of demand rather than requests. Products framed around a job tend to resist feature creep, because every addition can be tested against whether it serves the job.

A product example

Interviews for a project-reporting tool reveal the real job is not 'create reports' but 'reassure my leadership that the project is under control without spending my Friday on it'. That reframing pushes the team towards automated status summaries and confidence indicators rather than more chart types — and identifies the true competitor as a hurried Friday-afternoon email.

Documents where this shows up

Jobs to Be Done Analysis for Product Managers · Customer Problem Statement for Product Managers · Persona Document for Product Managers · Product Discovery Brief for Product Managers

Related terms

User Persona · Product Discovery · Product-Market Fit

Sources

• Harvard Business Review — Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done' (Christensen et al.)