The Jobs To Be Done Playbook: Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs

by Jim Kalbach, Micahel Tanamachi (Illustrator), Michael Schrage (Foreword)

These days, consumers have real power: they can research companies, compare ratings, and find alternatives with a simple tap. Focusing on customer needs isn't a nice–to–have, it's a strategic imperative.

The Jobs To Be Done Playbook (JTBD) helps organizations turn market insight into action. This book shows you techniques to make offerings people want, as well as make people want your offering.

Genres: Design, Business, Nonfiction, Entrepreneurship, Research, Professional Development, Technology

323 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[ntnl · Rating 4 out of 5]

“People want to get a job done, not to interact with an organization.”

JTBD approach offers a fresh perspective on creating value for customers. This book will help you by showing you the way to connect the outside world with internal decision-making based on systematic models.

Customer needs that are important and not satisfied present the biggest opportunity. JTBD theory offers a rich framework for understanding customers. Prioritize tasks and/or products by looking for needs that are important and not currently well satisfied. If you know how the customer measures value, you can provide successful solutions in a measured, controlled way.

“JTBD is a lens, a way of seeing. It lets you step back from your business and understand the objectives of the people you serve.” - a slightly modified quote from the book without losing its meaning.

JTBD approach makes use of personas and/or job performers. Not all job performers are the same, and personas can be used to illustrate different types of performers. JTBD provides a framework and common language for translating insights from job performers into a model for action. Define the value you’re going after, and precede it with research and modeling.

Lastly, why should we hear what Jim Kalbach has to say in this book? Honestly, I only read it because it was a task given, not by choice anyway. To answer that question I will quote the author himself - “I stay very close to our accounts and customers. I like to see what people are doing with the product firsthand and help them directly. I feel that’s important. Even though I’m the Head of Customer Experience, I want to be close to the action so that I can understand our customers’ experience. I spend a lot of time with our customers.”

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Didn't really click with me as much as I was hoping for. Many times I felt that I could replace JTBD with design and have the exact same message. The plays seem useful but quite repetitive. I was hoping to learn new things or consolidate knowledge I already have. Both didn't really happen, but the book isn't bad either.

My key takeaway is to get out more to talk to and observe your users and customers. I don't think specifically highlighting jobs to be done helps that much because good research and design takes users goals, needs and motivations anyway into account. I feel like there are alternatives to job maps et al that work just as good or even better at creating a shared understanding among business stakeholders.

Also at the end it's mentioned how design is different than JTBD as JTBD is a broader concept while design is mainly targeted at software interfaces. I heavily disagree with this notion as I'm sure many of us have used design practices in many other ways (e.g. designing workshops, events, business models, organizations, etc). I don't really know why the author made that comment as he himself has a long standing background in UX/CX...

[Minjeong · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book helped me roll out jobs to be done at my 7-person startup. It strikes the right balance between being conceptually rigorous and practical. I was able to read the book in one week, use it to structure jobs interviews, and create a jobs map. The research process gained team buy-in and my teammates were appreciative of the stories and documentation.

Additional note: It's not like we weren't doing user interviews before. It's that the JTBD, as the author says in the book, tends to use language that speaks to people outside of the design team, and is more tangible than general human centered design research methods that focus on defining user needs. I found JTBD to be an improved framework compared to the needs-based qualitative interviews I had led before.

[Igor Razvodovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Does a good job where most JTBD literature fails: describing how it can be used in practice. I especially liked how it links jobs theory to other user-centred techniques and theories. These connections help in drawing a fuller picture of how and when it can be used. The book does not escape the usual does-it-all bravado of JTBD however.

[Jake Mitchell · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are a lot of high-quality books about the Jobs to be Done theory, but most of them place a heavy focus on the "theory" part - trying to get practical examples and methods of JTBD can be difficult, until now. The JTBD playbook was designed with the practitioner in mind (the product manager, the designer, the marketer, etc), and how the theories of JTBD can help them uncover new insights to drive their own work. This is a great book that covers a lot of ground in a very practical way, and it's well-organized so it can be easy to find a particular "play" (technique) depending on the business challenge trying to be solved. I thought I was very familiar with the Jobs to be Done theory, but this book taught me a lot.

[Christi · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this book to be a great playbook to pick and choose from. However, reading it for a team-wide book club left me wanting a more start-to-finish approach (granted, I knew it was a playbook when I started). I feel like it could have remained a playbook, but allowed for a more cover-to-cover reading had a single example been used throughout. If the author had set up a problem/example fully in the beginning and used the same example throughout, it would have allowed a full reading to make an impact, instead of picking and choosing different sections/chapters based on the problem you are trying to solve at the moment.

[Amy Dalton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m not enjoying this book at all. Leaders at my work keep talking about it but I’m on chapter 6 and don’t think I’ve learned anything. If you have been doing UX design, product design or similar for a long time, this is not the book for you. All the content is just the same ole’, same ole with new names! It’s really unbelievable that I bought this book and tried to read it. Apparently there is an audience that can benefit from it but to me it’s common sense renamed and often times not. It’s user focused ways of working.

[Rebecca Noran · Rating 4 out of 5]

What job is the person trying to do? How do you help them make progress on it? Good reference, packs a ton in with handy summary guide of all the steps/plays at the end.

[Beshoy Maher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book might be the discovery of the year for me. I'll surely go back to it constantly.

[Ecesu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, it took me FOREVER to finish this book, granted there were a couple months there where I refused/avoided picking it up. And it took forever because whenever reading, I had to take SO. MANY. NOTES.

There’s definitely a lot of interesting, useful stuff in here (for my kind of work). Plus, it’s structured really well with introductions to concepts, examples, pros and cons, recaps, and resources for further reading. (It does leave you with more to read then when you started…)

But I am also ready to throw this book across the room, burn it, or in this case return it to its owner (months later). Now that it’s done I feel that I have been set free.

[Han Xu · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first three chapters are helpful when it talks about core constructs of JTBD and how to use them. Looking like an attempt to cover more business activities and phases, it becomes totally confusing as the models and theories that do not seem relevant or originate within the JTBD framework, are introduced. Not sure if that’s a root problem with JTBD or just how this specific book is organized, broadening the framework’s scope definitely kills the cohesiveness. The book ends like a hodgepodge.

[Francis Djabri · Rating 3 out of 5]

This wasn't the synthesis I was hoping for. JTBD is a maddening field filled with confusing terminology and different schools of thought. This was a golden opportunity to bring some clarity that mostly misses the mark. Kalbach rightly highlights the hierarchical and messy nature of goal-directed behavior are urges practitioners to be clear about what level they are operating at but then seems to ignore his own advice.

[Céleste · Rating 3 out of 5]

Certains passages sont intéressants pour comprendre les jobs to be done mais ça reste très en surface, assez basique. Pas vraiment un livre pour aller plus loin

[Hamilton Carvalho · Rating 1 out of 5]

Another book that should have been an article.

[Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve read several of the key jobs to be done books (“what customers want,” “when coffee & kale compete”) as well as product discovery books (“product discovery habits,” “the mom test”) but while the latter lack depth & rigour, the former are often like reading texts from opposing sects of the same religion.

This incredible book takes a full understanding of the different theories & expresses clearly & succinctly how to use them in practice, without the need to choose or somehow falsify one branch to realise the massive value understanding the job customers hire products can bring.

If you truly understand something you can state it clearly & simply. Kalbach clearly does: salute!

[Fan Marin]

1. Avoid getting hungry, ppl buying milkshake in the morning when heading to work.
Jobs: Get breakfast on the go
Look at objectives, predict human behavior. Company need to know what drives human behavior. Our solution fits in their world.
Underline job: relationship between objective and solution.
Avoid opinion-based research.
Find good market-fit to increase demand.

People buy you (service/products) to get a job done.

Structure:
WHO: users/job performer/buyer, differentiate the buyer and users
WHY: objective
HOW: how the job get done

Jobs: independent of your solution. Your service is a means to an end. what's the end? Identify sequences/steps of the job to discover the . Not a journey map! (want your company wants them to do)

[Khuong Nguyen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Kalbach cho rằng, để tạo ra một sản phẩm thành công, chúng ta phải hiểu rõ nhu cầu của khách hàng và đặt họ làm trọng tâm của quá trình phát triển sản phẩm. Sách giới thiệu một số kỹ thuật và phương pháp giúp tác giả tìm hiểu về nhu cầu của khách hàng, bao gồm cả việc tương tác trực tiếp với họ và phân tích dữ liệu.
Cuốn sách còn giới thiệu một số bộ công cụ và quy trình giúp cho việc phát triển sản phẩm trở nên hiệu quả hơn, gồm cả việc tạo ra một lộ trình phát triển sản phẩm mới và cách định vị mục tiêu cho sản phẩm"

[Ash · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has become part of my reference stack while moving through our product design practice—our team read it as part of our book club. Lots of helpful information and guidelines to assist our team while thoughtfully interacting with our customers. The flow of the book took some internal motivation to get through, and felt repetitive at times. Albeit, the content has been useful and has scaled well for conversations with other teams in the organization.

[Bradley Walker]

i like jobs to be done, and now i have a much clearer understanding of what is is and how to use it. and i have started using it. but like all other introductions to jtbd i’ve been exposed to the book tries too hard to show you how useful jtbd can be by including different ways it can play with other design / product frameworks. this confused me in the past when trying to understand what jtbd is.

[Ricardo Urresti · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a practical book on Jobs to be Done, as it explores techiniques to apply during interviews, and even how to create a structured interview program. It also compare the several approaches on the JTDB, that would help you to pick the best one for the problem or initiative you're working on. I fully recommend.

[Steph B]

This was way more JTBD than I actually had an appetite for. If you want to go extremely deep on the idea this is a good book. If you want to just understand it, maybe go find a 20 minute YouTube video and move on. This was too much for me… a few page pdf outline of this info would have given the same learnings.

[Cesar Martinez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very practical and putting the best of JTBD alltogether

The way is organized with its plays helps to understand how to put ir in practice and getting the best of diverses authors of JTBD with its advantages and disadvantanges helps to get his experiences

[Aaron McAdam · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a fantastic introduction to the customer-centric world of Jobs to be Done. It's full of practical ideas to gain and share insight into the progress that users want to make in their lives. I'd recommend this to product managers and engineers who want to provide value to their customers.

[Eden Wen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense, but excellent book on a jobs to be done perspective and approach to product development. A book I will continue to reference throughout my career and the first to which I will point those interested in product design/development.

[Łukasz Roth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lot of valuable knowledge but too repetitive. Many times I had a feeling that I am reading over and over the same things. Would be better to show more real live examples and case studies and less theory.

[Alisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

My favorite part was all the frameworks and models for analyzing/organizing the data. Very cool approaches so reports don't just read the facts but are actually valuable in addressing the business question.

[Mike Zornek · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say I skimmed this more than I read it.

I think there are some good tidbits in here, but it recommends a lot of processes and feels more appropriate for a larger team than an individual developer.

[Raven McKnight · Rating 4 out of 5]

JTBD as a framework makes so much sense, but these sorts of books always lose me when they start talking about innovation and profit and whatever else corporations worry about. the first half felt very relevant to my work, the second half less so. the pros & cons of being a public servant, lol.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Kalbach titled this a "playbook," he wasn't kidding. This is an indespensible reference for anyone using the JBTD toolkit in their work.

[Niklas Laninge · Rating 3 out of 5]

The only intro to the perspective you need to get going. A bit to “hyperlinked” at times with references to posts and other books. The last chapters on when to use the technique is useful.