What jobs do you need to get done?

I was recently at a two day workshop with @AshMaurya learning a little bit more about #RunningLean and how to get going with a #LeanStartup.

Having followed Ash’s blog over a couple of years and reading about the running lean concepts I was hoping to try and cement some of the concepts in my mind.  One of the key things that stuck in my mind was using something called the Jobs To Be Done framework. Although a seemingly simple concept on the surface it is one of those things that make you think “doh, why didn’t I think that way before”.

The basic premise is that instead of using basic demographics such as age ranges, race, marital status, which tend to lead to products that are too focused on what companies want to sell, you really need to focus on what the customer actually needs.

The “jobs to be done framework” is intended to try and help uncover the circumstances that arise in customers’ lives because customers rarely make buying decisions around what the “average” customer in their category may do — but they often buy things because they find themselves with a problem they would like to solve.

By determining what “job” the customer actually needs to get and is therefore “hiring” a product or service to do this job it should be possible for companies to develop and market products that are more tailored to what the customer is already trying to do.

With this in mind I am going to try to apply this technique with LeaveWizard and see if it helps us to better understand what jobs we are being hired to do and therefore identify other customers that are trying to get the same job done and would therefore be looking to hire our product to solve the same problem.

Have you heard of the Jobs To Be Done framework before? What do you think about it? I’d be really interested in hearing from you especially if you have successfully used it before.