Ann Mamaeva “Don’t ask customers what they want”

1. New York USA
London UK
Munich Germany
Zug Switzerland
Don’t ask customers what they want

2. LET’S GET ACQUAINTED!
Delivery Manager at DataArt
• Started in IT in 2006
• Mobile applications (iOS, Android)
• Web-solutions development and
management (Java, .Net)
• Product development and Marketing
• SAFe Agile certified (2016)
• Agile ICP-PPM, ICP-ATF certified,
Contact me at:
anna.mamaeva@gmail.com

3. 3
The Jobs to be Done framework
emerged in the early 1990s as a
helpful way to look at customer
motivations rather than customer
attributes.

5. Theory behind the JTBD
• People buy products and services to get a “job”
done.
• Products that win in the marketplace help
customers get a job done better and/or more
cheaply.
• A job-to-be-done is stable over time, making it an
attractive unit of analysis.
• Understanding the job-to-be-done provides a new
avenue for understanding customer needs.
• A job-to-be-done is functional and has emotional
and social jobs associated with it.
• A job-to-be-done is always a process (to make
progress).

6. JTBD and innovation framework
Let Products To
Address Unmet
Needs
Defining The Job
To Be Done
Find the alignment
with market
Discover
the opportunity
Uncover The
Customer’s
“Needs”
Find
underserved
outcome
1
2
3
4
5
6

7. What’s a
Job story?

8. 8

9. 9
When I’ve only got 2 minutes to stave off
hunger between meetings, I want to grab
something that will be quick, easy to eat and
boost my blood sugar fast, so I can stave off
hunger until dinner time
When I’ve only got 2 minutes to stave off
hunger between meetings, I want to grab
something that will be quick, easy to eat and
boost my blood sugar fast, so I can stave off
hunger until dinner time

10. Main stages
Identify Jobs Customers Are
Trying to Get Done
You want to study customers
and find out what they are
trying to accomplish
Categorize the Jobs to be
Done
The “job” has a lot of
“requirements” — not just
functional but also emotional
and social
Define competitors
You need to define few cases:
for what job your product is
hired for, why it got fired, and
why your customer switched to
other solution
10
Create Job Statements
Action + object + context
Prioritize the JTBD
Opportunities
There are hundreds of jobs that
customers are trying to get
done in every market. Which
one of these offers the best
opportunities for you?.
Create Outcome Statements
Think in terms of time, cost,
potential errors, quality,
dependability, availability, ease
of use, maintainability, and any
number of other satisfaction
and dissatisfaction dimensions.

11. The Desired Outcome Statement
Direction of improvement + Performance metric + Object of control
+ Contextual clarifer

12. The Degree To Which Need Is Underserved
• Discover opportunities to get the job done better
(underserved outcomes). A need is unmet if it is
important to the target population, but not satisfied by
the solutions customers are using today.
• Discover opportunities to get the job done more
cheaply (overserved outcomes). A need is
overserved if it is unimportant to the customer, yet very
satisfied by the solutions customers are using today.
• Quantify the degree to which each outcome in
over/underserved. Using the importance and
satisfaction data obtained for each outcome, calculate
an opportunity score for each one, revealing their
priority order.
• Determine the strengths and weaknesses of
competing solutions. Revealing how well competing
solutions address each of the outcomes.

13. Outcome based segmentation
13
1. Discover key variables.
2. Create clusters (segments). Cluster analysis is used to segment the market
into groups of customers with unique sets of unmet desired outcomes. The
unmet outcomes are used as the bases for segmentation.
3. Profile the segments. The profiling questions (included in the survey to
understand what variables cause complexity) are used to discover why certain
customers struggle more than others to get the job done. The survey also
collects information that reveals the size of the segment and if customers are
willing to pay more to get the job done better.

14. 14

15. Discover Hidden Segments Of Opportunity
• To make innovation
predictable, a company must
be able to discover segments
of customers with unique sets
of unmet needs.
• The best way to this is to
segment the market
accordingly

16. Align Products With Market
Opportunities
• Communicate the strengths of your products to customers in the target
segment.
• Include an outcome-based value proposition in those communications.
• Build a campaign around unmet needs. When potential customers use Google
to find and evaluate product alternatives, they rarely start by entering the
product name and model because they have yet to discover it. Rather, they
enter keywords or phrases that are associated with the “job-to-be-done,” such
as a job step or a specific desired outcome they are trying to achieve.
• Assign leads to defined segments. Many companies process all leads in the
same way even though customers have different unmet outcomes.

17. Long story short
1. Start with the high level job.
2. Identify a smaller job or jobs which help resolve the higher level job.
3. Observe how people solve the problem now
4. Interview people to understand their motivations for choosing their current solution
5. Come up with Job Stories, that investigate the motivations, causality, and anxieties
6. Create a solution (usually in the form of a feature or UI change) which resolves that Job
Story.

18. 18
Q&A
Follow #JTBD