Job Story

The key component to the Jobs to be Done Framework that captures the user’s primary desired outcome framed as if the user has hired the product to perform a job. Jobs stories are an effective method that documents practical user goals from your product. Similar to user stories but with more structure, which increased their effectiveness and limits misuse.

The job story consists of three main components - a situation, motivation, and desired outcome.

• Context – the circumstances of a job.
• Expected Want – the expected way of accomplishing the desired outcome.
• Desired Outcome – the expected result, by which a person will measure success, and their motivation.

Context	Expected Want	Desired Outcome
What is happening to trigger the job?	How is progress expected to be made on the job?	Why complete the job and what will it accomplish?

Type of Jobs

• “Big Hire” = overall product objective
• “Little Hire” = specific jobs while using a product to make progress
• Social Job - How a person would like to be perceived socially while completing a job.
• Functional Job - The practical task to meet a person’s requirements.
• Emotional Job - The feelings a person desires while completing a job.

Jobs to be Done Framework

Is a framework developed by Clayton Christensen based on Outcome-Driven Innovation by Anthony Ulwick. The theory is that people buy products and services to get jobs done. As people complete these jobs, they have certain measurable outcomes that they are attempting to achieve.

When to Use

1. To prioritize a product roadmap around the main outcomes that the users desire.
2. To guide what the designed solution must accomplish by prioritizing actions, remembering the user’s motivations, and making sure outcome meets expectations.
3. To help determine what an MVP must accomplish to be viable for the user.
4. To guide UX success metrics by looking at metrics that measure the desired outcomes.

Steps

1. Collect data from discovery research with your target users.
2. Identify the behavior patterns within your existing product or competitors that indicate desired outcomes.
3. Generalize the behavior to decouple the job story from actual product functions tasks. Its extremely important that the job doesn’t imply a specific function with a specific product.
4. Identify the motivations and contexts that the actions and desired outcomes take place.
5. Write all the job stories that are appropriate for your product, service, or project.

References

1. https://jtbd.info/replacing-the-user-story-with-the-job-story-af7cdee10c27
2. https://experiencinginformation.com/2016/10/23/a-practical-model-for-jobs-to-be-done-jtbd/
3. https://experiencinginformation.com/2016/12/11/combining-mental-model-diagrams-and-jobs-to-be-done/
4. http://www.whencoffeeandkalecompete.com/

Templates (if applicable)

1. Jobs to be Done Worksheet
2. Jobs to be Done Sketch File

Created by: Joe Steinkamp | Last updated by: Joe Steinkamp