Putting the Jobs to be Done Interview to Practice

Note: This is Part 7 in a short series of essays on Understanding Customer Demand. Read Part 6 here.

At the end of last year, we ran a Jobs to be Done (JTBD) interview process with Commoncog members. Much has already been written about the interview method, but I thought it would be useful to describe what we’ve learnt from doing it. This includes things that we struggled with, things we found oddly tricky, and things that we wished someone had told us earlier.

At this point in the Understanding Customer Demand series, you should already know what the JTBD framework is, and how it fits into the arsenal of demand thinking that we’ve covered. This essay is going to be a short one: a field report from practice.

Why Is This So Hard to Do?

The first thing you’ll discover about the JTBD interview is that it’s really hard to do. I think this is obvious from reading between the lines of all the major JTBD texts: Demand Side Sales 101 from Bob Moesta is filled with sidebars about how things can go wrong with the interview process; the team over at the Re-Wired saw it necessary to release The Jobs to be Done Handbook — a 66 page booklet