Job Definition
Job Definition is the final expression of a job in Jobs To Be Done method (JTBD). It is the highest form of knowledge captured in the (Knowledge Hierarchy) of consumer behavior.
In traditional Jobs to be Done (JTBD) analysis, as practiced by Bob Moesta, the Job Definition is an output that defines consumer behavior as an expression of situational causality. As the outcome of the process, we deem them to be good explanations of how a product is hired:
When I am _______________________________________________________ I hire _______________________________________________________ so that I can _______________________________________________________.
We treat Job Definitions more lightly. We find the Job Definition very useful to rephrase feature-oriented, supply-centered language into a language centered around the consumer’s context, and their need to overcome struggles and make progress. (See Struggling Moment.)
When someone says:
The pivot table is a high-end productivity feature.
We try to rephrase them as:
When I, as an analyst, need to munge lots of data, I hire the pivot table so that I can look good and be persuasive to my boss and colleagues.
In this sense, our treatment of the Job Definition is less demanding than its original use—it’s more hypothesis or conjecture and less proof and theorem. We find this is helpful because the form itself orients our thinking towards JTBD.
Purists may find our treatment blasphamous. As a low-end framework we bask in that criticism. (With apologies to Bob Moesta. )
