Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a framework focusing on the progress a customer is trying to achieve in a specific situation.
“Upgrade your user, not your product. Do not build better cameras; build better photographers.”
Customer demographics (e.g., 35-year-old software engineer in Seattle) explain who the user is, but they fail to explain why the user buys. JTBD reveals the causal triggers that drive customer purchasing and switching behavior.
Multi-Hop Causal Traversal Engine
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Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is a framework focusing on the progress a customer is trying to achieve in a specific situation.
Direct Relationships (3)
Transitive Neighbors (Connected via Hop 1)
Extended Causal Ripple Effects
Richard Ewing’s Research Thesis
We must design products around the human progress customers are trying to achieve, not the technology itself.
Why This Specification Exists
Companies build features based on superficial user requests that fail to drive adoption or retention.
Creating static marketing personas filled with demographic trivia.
Demographics cannot explain the causal mechanisms of why a customer buys or cancels software.
Jobs to Be Done identifying the situational forces and desired progress driving user behavior.
What Changes If You Believe This?
Engineers understand the emotional and functional context of why features are being built.
Focuses R&D capital on high-willingness-to-pay customer jobs.
PMs craft precise value propositions and discard features that do not serve the core job.
Aligns security features with the user’s need for institutional trust and peace of mind.
Recommended Action by Role
Conduct 5 JTBD switch interviews with recent churned customers to identify the real job.
Audit Interview Scorecard
Evaluates candidate ability to uncover customer jobs and root motivations.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q:What is Jobs to Be Done?
A framework developed by Clayton Christensen and Bob Moesta establishing that customers hire products to make progress in specific circumstances.
Q:How does JTBD improve product design?
It aligns features directly with the customer’s functional and emotional success criteria, eliminating useless feature bloat.
Canonical Specification Origin
Customers hire products to achieve progress in specific circumstances.
Corpus Interconnections
Richard Ewing artifacts developed around this canonical framework, including publications, execution tools, and diagnostic models.
External Adoption & Peer Citations
Documented instances where independent researchers, engineering teams, and publications have cited, implemented, or referenced this concept outside Richard Ewing’s ecosystem.
External Evidence: No independently verified references recorded yet.
This concept is part of Richard Ewing’s original baseline canon. External citations and implementations are added only upon rigorous empirical verification.
Inspectable Evidence Ledger
Classified evidence items supporting, extending, or refining this canonical research specification.
| Evidence Item | Publisher | Evidence Type | Strength | Role | Action |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Real Innovation Requires Deleting Code, Not Writing It | Built In | Executive Essay | ★★★★★ | Origin | Inspect ↗ |
Recommended Citation
Ewing, R. (2026). "Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)." Richard Ewing Research Canon. Available at: https://www.richardewing.io/concepts/jobs-to-be-done
@article{ewing_jobs_to_be_done,
author = {Ewing, Richard},
title = {Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)},
journal = {Richard Ewing Research Canon},
year = {2026},
url = {https://www.richardewing.io/concepts/jobs-to-be-done}
}