David Lee, a founder and managing partner of the financial firm SV Angel, recently wrote a blog post on three key insights regarding the jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) theory, originally described by Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, in his book The Innovator's Solution.
For those unfamiliar, the JTBD theory is intended to help company leaders think about their products and services by considering how their customers like to use them. Company leaders can do this by asking themselves, "What is the job of our product team?"
Lee's post explores how the theory applies to both enterprise-driven teams (those creating solutions for their own organization) as well as market-driven teams (those creating solutions to sell to other organizations). Additionally, Lee writes of the complexity of defining the job. For enterprise-driven projects, defining the job means you must understand what your stakeholders are trying to accomplish and what problem they are trying to solve.
When enterprise-driven projects begin, these projects can be viewed by some as being solutions looking for a problem. By this I mean that stakeholders will typically request from the delivery team some particular solution while not understanding what it is they are actually trying to accomplish. Keeping the JTBD theory in mind provides delivery teams a means of discovering what they really need to present to the stakeholders in order to meet their needs.
In this video, Clayton Christensen describes how organizations can use the JTBD theory to study a problem they are facing and figure out how to resolve it by looking at other industries.
Going back to David Lee’s recent post, Lee writes that interviewing your stakeholders may not always be sufficient to gather information. As Lee says, "What people want or say is often very different from what they actually want or need."
Steve Jobs understood this when he made his frequently referenced comment about market research. Some took this to mean that you don't need market research, but that was not Jobs's intention; he was suggesting that you place a greater emphasis on observation rather than asking customers questions.
The same applies to enterprise-driven projects in which it is more instructive to watch how your stakeholders do their jobs than merely to ask them questions. Brandon Carlson suggested during his session at Agile 2012 that teams should stop listening to their customers and instead pay attention to what they do.
The JTBD theory is something that all members of a delivery team will find helpful in discovering what is the most appropriate focus of attention in their projects. Members of the design community have realized the importance of the JTBD theory. Team members who identify themselves as business analysts will also find JTBD a helpful theory to keep in mind when they are eliciting information from their stakeholders.
Let us know in the comments below whether or not you have found this theory helpful to your project development.
