The Jobs To Be Done Playbook
Align Your Markets, Organization, and Strategy Around Customer Needs
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 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.
Who this book is for
Change makers and transformation agents inside of companies looking to shift focus towards a customer-centric perspective. It’s suited for managers and thought leaders seeking internal alignment around solving customer problems and addressing unmet needs. More specifically, this book is for people who have limited resources and would like to use JTBD in a lightweight manner.
Key takeaway
A new way of seeing your customers and their desired outcomes
Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.
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 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.
Who this book is for
Change makers and transformation agents inside of companies looking to shift focus towards a customer-centric perspective. It’s suited for managers and thought leaders seeking internal alignment around solving customer problems and addressing unmet needs. More specifically, this book is for people who have limited resources and would like to use JTBD in a lightweight manner.
Key takeaway
A new way of seeing your customers and their desired outcomes
Available from Audible and other major audiobook sellers.
Testimonials
Jim is a true practitioner who is an expert in both design and applying jobs to be done to product problems. As such, this book holds a rare value: it’s fueled by practicality but steeped in solid theory as well.
Des Traynor, co-founder of Intercom
The Playbook is the ultimate guide to the JTBD approach and the most comprehensive analysis of the method to date.
Lada Gorlenko, Director of UX Research at Smartsheet and a curator of the Enterprise Experience conference.
Familiar with the Jobs to Be Done approach? Unfamiliar? It doesn’t matter because in this book Jim Kalbach seamlessly fuses together the JTBD framework with design techniques in an easy-to-understand way that will add more rigor to your design practices!
Richard Dalton, Head Of Design at Capital One
We seek to anchor ourselves in real human needs, but in the course of business, it’s easy to get lost. JTBD is an important weapon against that, and Jim does a great job breaking it down, connecting it to related frameworks, and making it actionable.
Giff Constable, author of Testing with Humans and CPO of Meetup
This book peels back the obfuscation that often surrounds jobs to be done and provides a practical primer that connects JTBD methodology with the foundations of user experience practice.
Peter Merholz, design management consultant and co-author of Org Design for Design Orgs
One of the biggest challenges of applying the Jobs to Be Done approach has been reconciling the varying methods promoted as best practice. In this tactical, practical book, Jim Kalbach has done a great job of reconciling the various schools of thought about JTBD and provides a clear, usable approach to the methodology to help teams better understand why their customers behave in certain ways and how to build better products and services that meet their needs. In that way, this book is a tremendous resource for organizations attempting to differentiate customer experience and value.
Jeff Gothelf, author Lean UX and Sense & Respond
Jobs to Be Done is key to building successful products, and this book masterfully gives a step-by-step guide on how to put it into practice.
Melissa Perri, author of Escaping the Build Trap
The hardest part of design research is influencing the product strategy itself in a clear and reproducible way. If you are ready for that challenge, pick up this book!
Andrea Gallagher, UX Research Lead, Google
This book does a great job of explaining the nuances of Jobs Theory and its many applications. It emphasizes the true value of Jobs Theory—as a lens that companies can use to take their understanding of customer needs to the next level. This book offers a perspective that is certain to help anyone who is interested in learning how to put Jobs Theory into practice.
Tony Ulwick, Strategyn Founder and CEO
Jim Kalbach’s The Jobs to Be Done Playbook provides a very good, broad perspective on the practical applications of JTBD for organizations to navigate the innovation process successfully. This down-to-earth manual will be highly valued by practitioners. With a range of examples and a wealth of references, readers will find The Playbook to be an excellent resource for finding their path through innovation and creating products of lasting value.
Bob Moesta, President and CEO of the Re-Wired Group
Table of Contents
Foreword by Michael Schrage
Chapter 1: Understanding JTBD
Chapter 2: Working with JTBD
Chapter 3: Discovering Value
Chapter 4: Defining Value
Chapter 5: Designing Value
Chapter 6: Delivering Value
Chapter 7: (Re-)Developing Value
Chapter 8: JTBD Formulas: Putting It All Together
