Book Review: Jobs to Be Done Playbook
Ever wondered why no product management framework works for your specific work environment? The ultimate overview on Jobs to Be Done by Jim Kalbach could answer this question for you. And help you to find the right framework just for you. This isn't as much a book review as much it's a book recommendation.
What to Expect From Jobs to Be Done
Right off the bat you get the biggest value of the book in description and comparison of the major widely used JTBD frameworks.
Jim Kalbach did his homework so we don't have to and in the first chapter you can find a simple table comparing definitions of the frameworks. This part can be the only you'll need.
Compared Frameworks
- Competing Against Luck (Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan)
- Bob Moesta on Jobs-to-be-Done (interview by Des Traynor, Inside Intercom podcast)
- What Is Jobs-to-be-Done? (Anthony Ulwick)
- The Social Innovation Imperative (Sandra M. Bates)
- Service Innovation (Lance Bettencourt)
- What #JobsToBeDone Is, and Is Not (Mike Boysen, Medium)
- Jobs to Be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered Innovation (Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber)
- When Coffee and Kale Compete (Alan Klement)
- Jobs-to-be-Done (Des Traynor, Intercom)
In later chapters you'll explore the common elements for all these frameworks. You'll learn who is the job performer, what are the needs, what the jobs are and how the process is influenced by circumstances.
The structure of chapters is similar to all the other books published by my favorite publisher Rosenfeld Media. Each chapter always starts with a description of the specific topic, lists all the important terms and then describe every of them one-by-one.
Most of the chapters also include diagrams explaining what role play each element in the whole process so you don't have to worry you wouldn't understand some of the concepts. It helps you also to imagine how each of the process could apply to your currently existing processes, available resources and skills.
The book may look quite thick to you with its 378 pages on a high-quality paper, but is full of large images and tables. Also the most important content is on 250 pages and I would recommend to not commit to more than first 3 chapters which are only 82 pages. Because the chapters Understanding, Core concepts and Discovering will clearly tell you if it makes sense to continue further.
If your executives or managers started to talk about Jobs to Be Done, this is the book to reach for. And that’s what I did a year ago too because I didn’t know much and I wanted to prevent starting the wrong way.
Conclusion
It's a real shame I can't find any negatives for most of the Rosenfeld publications. The format and structure is so good for me that the becomes inevitably useful.
In our context we're using only some pieces of the concept for enhancing framework we already use for product management. I have it on my desk and few times a year I read through one of the chapters to refresh the key points.
If you can buy the Jobs to Be Done by Jim Kalbach directly from Rosenfeld Media. Usually I buy paperback+ebook when I expect to come back to the book here and there and not just read it once.
