jobs-to-be-done skill

Purpose

Systematically explore what customers are trying to accomplish (functional, social, emotional jobs), the pains they experience, and the gains they seek. Use this framework to uncover unmet needs, validate product ideas, and ensure your solution addresses real motivations—not just surface-level feature requests.

This is not a survey—it's a structured lens for understanding why customers "hire" your product and what would make them "fire" it.

Input

Works best with: The customer segment (or product whose customers) you're analyzing. Also useful: Interview notes, support tickets, or research to mine for jobs, pains, and gains; the situation or trigger you care about.

Anything supplied with the invocation itself — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it and skip whatever it covers; don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill asks who the customer is and what progress they're trying to make before structuring the JTBD breakdown.

Example invocation: Run JTBD for freelance designers using our invoicing tool — here are 6 interview summaries.

Key Concepts

The Jobs-to-be-Done Framework

Influenced by Clayton Christensen and the Value Proposition Canvas (Osterwalder), JTBD breaks customer needs into three categories:

1. Customer Jobs:

• Functional jobs: Tasks customers need to perform (e.g., "send an invoice")
• Social jobs: How customers want to be perceived (e.g., "look professional to clients")
• Emotional jobs: Emotional states customers seek or avoid (e.g., "feel confident in my work")

2. Pains:

• Challenges: Obstacles customers face
• Costliness: What's too expensive in time, money, or effort
• Common mistakes: Errors customers make that could be prevented
• Unresolved problems: Gaps in current solutions

3. Gains:

• Expectations: What would exceed current solutions
• Savings: Time, money, or effort reductions that delight
• Adoption factors: What increases likelihood of switching
• Life improvement: How a solution makes life easier or more enjoyable

Why This Structure Works

• Separates job from solution: "Communicate with my team" (job) ≠ "email" (solution)
• Reveals underlying motivations: Functional job may be "track expenses," but emotional job is "feel in control of finances"
• Surfaces competition you didn't see: Customers "hire" non-obvious alternatives (pen and paper, spreadsheets, workarounds)
• Prioritizes by intensity: Not all pains are equal—focus on the most acute

Anti-Patterns (What This Is NOT)

• Not a feature wishlist: "I want AI, automation, and dashboards" is not a job
• Not demographics: "Millennials want mobile-first" is a persona trait, not a job
• Not generic: "Be more productive" is too vague—dig into which tasks and why
• Not one-dimensional: Focusing only on functional jobs misses social/emotional motivations

When to Use This

• Early-stage discovery (before you know the solution)
• Validating product-market fit (does your solution address the right jobs?)
• Prioritizing roadmap (which jobs are most painful/important?)
• Competitive analysis (what are customers "hiring" competitors for?)
• Marketing messaging (speak to jobs, not features)

When NOT to Use This

• After you've already built the product (too late for discovery)
• For trivial features (don't over-analyze small tweaks)
• As a substitute for quantitative validation (JTBD informs hypotheses; data validates them)

Application

Use template.md for the full fill-in structure.

Step 1: Define the Context

Before exploring JTBD, clarify:

• Target customer segment: Who are you studying? (reference skills/proto-persona/SKILL.md)
• Situation: In what context does the job arise? (e.g., "When managing a project deadline...")
• Current solutions: What do they use today? (competitors, workarounds, doing nothing)

If missing context: Conduct customer interviews, contextual inquiries, or "switch interviews" (why they switched from a previous solution).

Step 2: Explore Customer Jobs

Functional Jobs

Ask: "What tasks are you trying to complete?"

### Functional Jobs:
- [Task 1 customer needs to perform]
- [Task 2 customer needs to perform]
- [Task 3 customer needs to perform]

Examples:

• "Reconcile monthly expenses for tax filing"
• "Onboard a new team member in under 2 hours"
• "Deploy code to production without downtime"

Quality checks:

• Verb-driven: Jobs are actions ("send," "analyze," "coordinate")
• Solution-agnostic: Don't say "use email to communicate"—say "communicate with remote teammates"
• Specific: "Manage finances" is too broad; "Track business expenses for tax deductions" is specific

Social Jobs

Ask: "How do you want to be perceived by others?"

### Social Jobs:
- [Way customer wants to be perceived socially 1]
- [Way customer wants to be perceived socially 2]
- [Way customer wants to be perceived socially 3]

Examples:

• "Be seen as a strategic thinker by my exec team"
• "Appear responsive and reliable to clients"
• "Look tech-savvy to my younger colleagues"

Quality checks:

• Audience-specific: Who is the customer trying to impress? (boss, clients, peers, etc.)
• Emotional weight: Social jobs often drive adoption more than functional jobs

Emotional Jobs

Ask: "What emotional state do you want to achieve or avoid?"

### Emotional Jobs:
- [Emotional state customer seeks or avoids 1]
- [Emotional state customer seeks or avoids 2]
- [Emotional state customer seeks or avoids 3]

Examples:

• "Feel confident I'm not missing important details"
• "Avoid the anxiety of manual data entry errors"
• "Feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day"

Quality checks:

• Positive and negative: Include both what they seek ("feel in control") and what they avoid ("avoid embarrassment")
• Rooted in research: Don't fabricate emotions—use customer quotes

Step 3: Identify Pains

Challenges

Ask: "What obstacles are preventing you from completing this job?"

### Challenges:
- [Obstacle customer faces 1]
- [Obstacle customer faces 2]
- [Obstacle customer faces 3]

Examples:

• "Tools don't integrate, forcing manual data entry"
• "No visibility into what teammates are working on"
• "Approval processes take 3+ days, blocking progress"

Costliness