How to Uncover Evidence-Backed Jobs-To-Be-Done

Step by step guide to conducting and analyzing depth interviews for Jobs-To-Be-Done

Your client is bought into the theory of ‘Jobs to be Done’, and wants you to help them discover what their product’s most important jobs is.

Here’s a step by step guide for how to uncover evidence-backed Jobs to be Done through in depth interviews with active users.

Step 1. Start with the framework

As you plan your research, it’s important to visualize your final research output so you can ensure your recruiting, interviewing, and analysis is leading up to the Jobs-To-Be-Done that you’ll deliver to your client.

Here’s an adapted framework* we created based off Tony Ulwick’s Jobs-To-Be-Done template. Don’t fill this out yet! The evidence you collect through your research will inform what goes in the blanks.

Download a PDF of this chart.

Step 2. Recruit active users for in-depth interviews

Focus on users who derive the most value out of your client’s product to interview. This can be determined by the most active, or the most heavy users of the product. They will provide the most relevant insight for the Job to be Done.

Step 3. Structure your interview questions around the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

As you write your interview guide, make sure to cover these topics.

• Target audience’s background and context: Gather context about your target audience. What’s their environment when they are using your client’s product? If it’s a business product, who do they work with, what is their day to day work like? If it’s a consumer product, what are their habits like? What are they doing before and after using your client’s product? These questions will provide insight into the reasons and barriers for hire.
• Find Jobs-To-Be-Done by asking for a play-by-play of how they use the product: Ask participants to walk you through how they use the product. Encourage them to tell it like a story, or sequence of events. Try to determine what they’re trying to accomplish, and what the situations are when they’re doing the job.
• Find reasons for hire by asking the 5 whys: When they describe how they use it, ask them follow up questions. Why do you do it that way? Tell me more about that. Describe it to me. This will help you uncover their “reasons for hire”, the motivations for why they hired this product for the job.
• Find barriers for hire by picking up on any tensions or blockers: As they provide answers, hone in on anything that sounds like a barrier or blocker to using the product. Are there unmet needs that they are solving with compensating behaviors?
• Find other tools for the job by asking about previous experiences: Ask them how they completed the job in the past before using your client’s product. This can provide great insight into what other tools were hired for the job.

And of course, leave room for spontaneous discoveries that you may not have planned to learn.

Step 4. Code your interview transcripts using the framework categories

After conducting interviews, and before beginning analysis, add these codes to your Delve project. These create a starting structure for analysis that will enable you to synthesize your results in a way that will help determine your final Job-To-Be-Done. Some of the code structure is expected to change and evolve as you analyze, but this gives it a strong starting foundation.

• Target audience: background
• Job-To-Be-Done: Trying to accomplish
• Job-To-Be-Done: Situation
• Job-To-Be-Done: Struggle
• Tools hired
• Reasons for hire
• Barriers to hire

Notice how these codes directly fill in one of the blanks in the Evidence Backed Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

Step 5. Code transcripts according to codes

Read through the interview transcripts, and when you find something related to the initial set of codes, highlight and code it!

Click between different transcripts and continue coding in order to find themes and commonalities amongst multiple research participants.

Click into a code page to see all the quotes across interviews that pertain to each code. This creates an easy way to see all the evidence in one place, so you can synthesize the themes.

When you begin to see multiple themes that pertain to the top level codes, create subcodes to add differentiation and nuance to your categorization.

In the example below, I observed multiple “Jobs to Be Done: Struggles”, so I created a code for each one and grouped them under the top level code.

Step 6. Merge similar codes and iterate how codes are grouped

After coding all your transcripts, you’re likely to have multiple codes that look very similar, or new groupings that make more sense than your initial organization system.

• Merge codes that are similar (Example: merging “Tight deadlines”, and “Not enough time”)
• Remove codes that are irrelevant
• Re-arrange codes into groupings that make more sense

Evolving and iterating on the codes is how you’ll discover the common themes amongst multiple participants. These themes will gradually turn into confident insights that will fill in the blanks of the Jobs-To-Be-Done framework.

Step 7. Refine Jobs to be Done by synthesizing the themes into insights

As you being to see more commonalities and themes, you can use the descriptions section of each code to begin drafting words that fit into the jobs to be done framework.

As you fill in the blanks of the framework, make sure to use as much of the participants’ language choices as possible.

Step 8. Complete the framework!

Use your synthesis and descriptions to complete the Evidence-Backed Jobs-To-Be-Done framework. Since the framework was derived from interviews you conducted and themes that emerged, you can confidently present the Job-To-Be-Done to your client and know that it’s valid and sound.

Here’s a completed example

Congrats! You’ve learned how to find Evidence-Backed Jobs-To-Be-Done!

Ready to start this process with Delve? Join the waitlist.

*We added “target audience” to the framework, because we believe that understanding the person behind the job is just as important, if not more important than the job itself