“Jobs To Be Done” is one of my favorite analytical tools. Tech analysis often appears to be a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a wreck. ((Stolen from Kant: “Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.)) The Jobs To Be Done” test is a metaphorical lighthouse, shining through the darkness, guiding us to our destination.
The Jobs To Be Done test is often stated as follows:
“What job is the product or service being hired to do?” ((Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen and coauthors articulated the JTBD concept in a Sloan Management Review article (Spring 2007) as follows: “Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. But the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. He simply has a job to be done and is seeking to ‘hire’ the best product or service to do it.”))
1) “The Jobs To Be Done” test is concise. It’s a single, self-explanatory sentence. It does not require essays (like this one) to explain how it works. You read it, and you apply it. The end.
If it can’t do any useful job then it won’t get hired. Conversely, if it nails an unmet job, it will be blindingly successful. ~ Horace Dediu (@asymco)
2) It’s a metaphor. Many say that we think metaphorically and the “Jobs To Be Done” test does the translation for us.
A metaphor juxtaposes two different things and then skews our point of view so unexpected similarities emerge. It’s a sort of magical mental changing room — where one thing, for a moment, becomes another, and in that moment we see things in a whole new way. Metaphorical thinking half discovers and half invents the likeness it describes. ((Paraphrased from “The World In A Phrase, James Geary))
The “Jobs To Be Done” test shakes things up. We don’t normally think that we are “hiring” a task or a service, but we are, and the “Jobs To Be Done” test forces us to see things in that entirely new way.
3) The “Jobs To Be Done” test forces us to re-focus on what matters — and what matters is the user, not the product or the producer.
It is clear from any study of business that it is human nature to think of things from one’s own point of view. But the product or service works best if it is viewed from the buyer’s or user’s perspective. No amount of time, effort, money or engineering is going to matter if the product does not serve the purpose of the end user. This is a lesson that we have to continuously relearn. The “Jobs To Be Done” test forces us to re-learn the lesson; to view things from the perspective of the users.
You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology, not the other way around. ~ Steve Jobs
Conclusion
For more on Jobs To Be Done, check out Horace Dediu’s most recent podcast: “Chief Jobs Officer.”
“It is clear from any study of business that it is human nature to think of things from one’s own point of view. But the product or service works best if it is viewed from the buyer’s or user’s perspective.”
Good advice to tech geeks if they pay heed or atleast try to free themselves from GHz Multicore Shackles.
Well apart from joke this is the crux of the matter. I think that’s the reason there are very very few good analyst out there, not just on technical side but every sphere of social behaviour. Many analys pour their own emotions(hate, love, biases etc) in their opinion and the result is simply pathetic analysis.
Some years ago I was like them as well, see everything from my glasses instead of finding other dimensions but I was fortunate because one fine day on a political blog a friend asked me a very is ole question. Why do I believe what I believe? Just pondering on this simple yet extremely difficult question turned my thinking ability or opinion forming upside down and made me an agnostic. Now I give advice others when giving analysis you should be like a stone with no emotions at all and if you have good observation your analysis would be good.
I think the following quote backs up your comment, above:
“It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.” ~ Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld
That is a good advice that is very hard to apply.
I’m struggling to empathize with your post. If you’re giving advise to an analyst, I get it. Otherwise I really don’t.
GHz and multicore are liberators, not shackles. It’s a totally artificial construct that power and ease are mutually exclusive, just as artificial as the notion that oversimplification is to be desired.
“Make it as simple as possible, but not too simple” -Albert Einstein
“”It is difficult to free fools(Tech Geeks) from the chains they revere.”
-Voltaire” -NonyAsip
A fool is a fool regardless of whether they are a geek, physician, clergyman, teacher, pilot, etc. To equate technical knowledge and technical ambition with being a fool is not proper. We could use more such “fools” in the US. Rather than derision, they should have “rock star status”.
But I digress… The biggest hallmark of a fool is not thinking for themselves.
When speaking of “Jobs to be Done”, GHz and muticore directly impact the job. One of the most important jobs I have done, for myself, was a 26 hour printout on an early era inkjet printer. That too was progress over the alternatives at the time. Today it would literally take 15 minutes on equipment that cost less. These things matter.
“I’m struggling to empathize with your post. If you’re giving advise to an analyst, I get it. Otherwise I really don’t.” -Klahanas
I think analysis is not just the domain of so called analysts, any person giving an opinion or having a point of view on any subject is kind of analysis to me. So my advice, to put aside your emotion while evaluating something to achieve an highly objective and rational point of view, targets common people as well.
”When speaking of “Jobs to be Done”, GHz and muticore directly impact the job.” -Klahanas
I agree to some extent but what puzzles me is that one GHz dualcore Android phone is not equal to one GHz dualcore iOS device.
Taking a line from Animal Farm, all ”GHz Multi Core” are equal but some are more equal. 😉
“GHz and multicore are liberators, not shackles. It’s a totally artificial construct that power and ease are mutually exclusive, just as artificial as the notion that oversimplification is to be desired.” -Klahanas
Well Klahanas, it’s not that I’m dead against speeds and feeds. I find these GHz and multicore things just a pathway or road or journey towards the end goal, which I think is user experience and ease of use etc. Now the problem I find with speed and feed guys is that they’ve lost on those roads of GHz and multicore. They’re too much engaged in specs that they’ve forgotten the end goal. These specs are just a medium for a good user experience. To me they’re more interested in ball possession instead of scoring goals.
And worst thing I’ve observed about tech guys is they’ve no sense of aesthetics. They simply couldn’t comprehend beauty of design(I’m not including you in this category of people) let alone praise. Some time ago I read a very good comment on a tech blog explaining the mentality of an engineer(techie).
”Business is like sex.
Coming first is not important.
Doing it right is.
There’s a persistent bias when it comes to looking at technology products. The bias comes mainly from engineers. They look at the engineering of a thing and identity the origin of the components.
The iPod has a small hard drive (not invented by Apple)
A screen (not invented by Apple)
A MP3 chipset and logic (not invented by Apple)
A wheel thing (definitely not invented by Apple)
And having reduced the device to its basic components, declare with absolute certainty that there is nothing new to see here. Apple originated nothing. Any credit for the iPod rests with the originators of these various bits.
That viewpoint is profoundly wrong. Consumer electronics is more like cooking. Great chefs don’t create ingredients, they create great recipes.
What Apple did was synthesize a product which transformed the music industry. Apple’s innovation was not in inventing parts, but designing a complete product. This device stole portable music away from Sony – and gave music lovers a way to carry and access their whole music collection in a simple usable package.
Apple has great engineering too, but its the emphasis on design which is the keystone of their commercial success.
Design, isn’t something that engineers fully comprehend. Refining a product from the point of view of the end-user down, rather than from the components up is an alien idea. Apple’s success leaves them perplexed, they conclude that it is down to mere “marketing” or even “stupidity”.
By placing user-experience and design before engineering and features, Apple steers a dramatically different path to those engineering-led companies. It is this different path that takes them away from “received tech industry wisdom” and towards astonishing levels of profitability.”
Thanks for taking the time, and caring enough to clarify. I don’t disagree with the design aspects, though I do prioritize them differently.
“And having reduced the device to its basic components, declare with absolute certainty that there is nothing new to see here.”
This is where I feel techies are both right and wrong. They are right because the iPod was just but one possible configuration of things previously invented. Most especially the microprocessor. No microprocessor, no MP3 player of any kind. On the other hand they are wrong, because design does matter.
Design, for design’s sake, can also get in the way. If the iPad were twice as thick, would the battery life be a few days? Did we really need a thinner iMac, at the expense of upgradability? Did a superficially ugly moon lander not get us to the moon? Is it more important that medicine taste good, or that it works?
One of my loves in this world is music. Still, I’ll take one Michael Faraday (just so the comparison doesn’t become too ridiculous, and I say Einstein) over an infinite number of Justin Bieber’s, or even 10 Mozarts. In no way do I mean to be disrespectful to the arts in saying so. It would be a less beautiful world without Mozart, but even uglier without Faraday.
”This is where I feel techies are both right and wrong. They are right because the iPod was just but one possible configuration of things previously invented. Most especially the microprocessor. No microprocessor, no MP3 player of any kind.”
Now here you’re banging the same drum techies always love to bang.
Once a question was asked in my university class. What is an invention? My thoughts were existing ingredients different recipe.
To me it’s like to belittle Apple(or any other company) efforts and if we go with the same logic than what is the microprocessor made of. It is made of some ingredients previously invented(or discovered). It’s a never ending cycle. Name me any invention that is composed of some thing that never existed prior to that invention.
”Design, for design’s sake, can also get in the way.”
No one is asking to put a 1950 motor engine in a well designed Bentley. There needs to be some balance of design and functionality. Steve Jobs put this so eloquently .
”It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing”
-Steve Jobs
Now I’m sure that’s not all you heard me say.
Not all inventions are the same. Some are so fundamental, so profound, that they are valued higher (justly) by techies. This does not invalidate style and design.
To a techie the loom is more impressive than the Gucci dress. In many ways, it is, because it’s more enabling, AND includes the making of the Gucci dress, but it also gave us the parachute.
This is not to say that the beauty in the arts is invalid, it’s just different priorities, and different admiration.
”To a techie the loom is more impressive than the Gucci dress. In many ways, it is, because it’s more enabling, AND includes the making of the Gucci dress, but it also gave us the parachute.”
I think you’re looking at wrong side. We are talking about the attitude of tech geeks trying to belittle efforts of Apple(or any other company in this regard). It’s like diverting the subject to totally irrelevant course.
Lets go back in history. It’s 2007. iPhone is introduced. To me or many other people it is a revolutionary product which is going to change smartphones ever. Now a tech geek comes and say it’s nothing, made of capacitive technology which is not invented by Apple, microprocessor not invented by Apple, OS not invented by Apple.
Now how ridiculous it would sound. No one is claiming that Apple invented multi touch or microprocessor. It’s about iPhone, which is a package but techies shift their attention towards totally irrelevant things.
Let’s not get into attitudes…There’s plenty to go around. Not the least of which is believing in “magical” stuff, and that Facetime, for instance, is the first and only video conferencing software. If you really want to see the other side of attitude, just go over to Macdailynews and have a gander.
I agree the iPhone was a seminal product. No question. (So was the LG Prada at around the same time). It’s breakthroughs were in design, commercialization, and popularization. It broke new design ground, and actually was a breath of fresh air. It did nothing new, but it did it more elegantly. To a techie, it’s the new capabilities that matter more, even if they have to “learn” them. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s their taste and temperament. They might also see Apple proponents as “excessively gushing”, when they see it more for what it is (again, in their eyes).
To quote the late great George Carlin “Why is their stuff sh*t, while your sh*t is stuff?”. Works both ways.
Klahanas in my first post on this thread I asserted that their should be no emotions(hate, love bias etc) in analysis. So it covers the love for Apple part as well.
Now the word ‘magical’. It’s just a metaphor. And you know why this word is used again and again. Because of techies love of making technology difficult to use for common people. That is the reason Apple comes up with some simple solution for ordinary folks branding it ‘magical’.
Now coming to FaceTime. I think it was 2005 when I first made a video call. The experience was simply terrible. The receiver’s picture coming into my phone was very bad too grainy. Even in later years the experience of video calling wasn’t good as well. Other companies were just trying to be first with video calling without thinking about the user experience of it, I don’t think optics or chipset or connectivity was ready at that time. Than this FaceTime thing came up. Now how it did differently than other companies. To limit it just on WiFi. Just to make the experience better and it sure did and after the LTE(4G) came into mainstream it started on cellular connectivity. Again reiterating the point. Coming first is not an achievement but doing it right is. Now tell me why this FaceTime moniker has widespread and not the video calling of last decade. It’s not just marketing it’s mainly the experience which wasn’t there in last decade video calling.
”It did nothing new, but it did it more elegantly.”
I told you earlier take off your well earned biased glasses. It’s not about adding this and that. It’s about doing it right. iPhone OS in 2007 was well ahead of anything that was there at that point of time.
And it’s not that I don’t find anything disturbing in Apple’s practice. There are some areas especially their software upgrade on older devices. I don’t find this with their reputation. I still have my iPhone 4 and 4S, which were very zippy in their original OS but now iPhone 4 running
“What is an invention? My thoughts were existing ingredients different recipe.”
Not quite. Invention would either be new ingredients or existing ingredients and a recipe for a new type of dish. Adding chocolate chips to cookie dough was innovative; adding milk and sugar to cocoa to create milk chocolate was inventive. I’ll grant my example is not perfect and sometimes the distinction comes down to splitting hairs. The distinction is even harder to make when the difference is mostly due to software.
”adding milk and sugar to cocoa to create milk chocolate was inventive.”
But milk, sugar and cocoa were existing products, a new ‘recipe’ was formed.
I’m not trying to take credit away from some company or individual who comes up with a radical or different recipe, actually I’m all for it. It’s the tech geek mentality to try to trivialize some radically different recipe which I think due to their biases.
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