Jobs-to-Be-Done Canvas

Write the job your customer hires a product for, as it would still be true if your product disappeared, then map its steps and score the outcomes that matter most and are served worst.

Jobs-to-be-done is practitioner theory with case-based support and little systematic testing (Christensen, Hall, Dillon & Duncan, 2016). The job map and opportunity scoring are consulting practice with little independent validation (Ulwick, 2002; Bettencourt & Ulwick, 2008). The switching forces in Step 4 are a practitioner checklist, not research. Scales on this page are rules of thumb.

Use it when:

• You know who your customer is but not why they buy, switch or stay with what they have.
• You are deciding what to build, add or drop and want the decision anchored in the customer's progress, not your feature list.
• Customers say they like your offer but do not switch to it, and you need to understand what holds them back.

Skip it when:

• You have not yet chosen whom to focus on: start with 6.1 Who Are Our Customers or 6.2 Segmentation Snapshot.
• You already know the job and want to list and rank pains and gains for a value proposition: use 6.5 Pains & Gains List.

People do not buy products; they hire them to make progress in a particular circumstance. The unit of analysis is therefore the job, not the customer's traits or the product's features. Jobs stay stable while solutions change, they have functional, emotional and social sides at once, and the circumstance explains buying that demographics cannot (Christensen, Hall, Dillon & Duncan, 2016). That is practitioner theory backed by cases, with little systematic testing.

The outcome-driven tools this canvas borrows are consulting practice: a job map that breaks any job into the same eight steps, and the search for outcomes rated important but poorly satisfied (Ulwick, 2002; Bettencourt & Ulwick, 2008). Use both as a disciplined way to run customer interviews, not as instruments with proven predictive power. That is why the job statement must leave your product out, why the map covers the steps before and after the one you serve, and why the outcome scores must come from customers, not from the team.

Fill in the sentence. Use words a customer would use. If your product's name or category appears, rewrite it.

Strong answer: "When the quarterly VAT return is due in the middle of harvest, I want to hand over my paperwork without sorting it, so I can stay in the field and still avoid late fees." Not "I want an accounting service."

When I (situation), I want to (motivation), so I can (expected outcome).

Job performer (role, not name):

Importance of the job to them: High / Medium / Low Satisfaction with today's solutions: Low / Medium / High

Illustrative example: the business and all numbers are made up.

A five-person accounting firm in rural Sweden serves small farms. The partner who meets clients fills in the page after seven conversations.

Step 1: "When the VAT return is due during harvest, I want to hand over my paperwork without sorting it, so I can stay in the field and avoid late fees." Job performer: the farm owner.

Step 2: social side: be seen by the bank as in control of the numbers. Today a relative checks the accounts before bank meetings.

Step 3: the worst pain sits in Locate: receipts are in three places and nobody knows what is missing. The firm only serves Execute.

Step 4: push: late fees last year. Anxiety: a stranger finding old mistakes. Habit: Sunday evenings at the kitchen table.

Step 5: "Minimize the time to find missing receipts before the deadline" scores importance 5, satisfaction 2. Focus: a monthly list of missing documents, sent before harvest.

What changed: the firm stopped pitching faster bookkeeping, which clients already rated as satisfactory, and offered a check of previous years' accounts in the first meeting to ease the anxiety.