Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) offers a powerful lens for understanding customer motivations. But to truly unlock its potential, it needs more than just a mindset shift – it needs structure. That’s where frameworks come in.

Frameworks help teams translate the JTBD philosophy into repeatable, strategic processes. Instead of relying on instinct or guesswork, frameworks provide clearly defined steps for uncovering customer needs, mapping experiences, and building solutions with purpose. This is especially valuable for cross-functional teams like product management, marketing, design, and operations, where aligning on priorities can be challenging.

Bringing Clarity to Complex Customer Needs

At its core, JTBD is all about identifying the progress people are trying to make in their lives or work – their "job to be done." But these jobs can be abstract or hidden under layers of behaviors, frustrations, and preferences. Structured frameworks help surface those needs through consistent user research methods, providing a reliable way to collect and analyze data.

Without this structure, teams may collect siloed insights or misinterpret what the customer is truly trying to achieve. Frameworks ensure everyone is speaking the same language and focusing on the right level of the customer experience.

Benefits of Using JTBD-Supporting Frameworks

• Uncover Hidden Needs: Go beyond surface-level feedback to understand what really drives customer decisions.
• Prioritize with Confidence: Focus on unmet needs with the greatest potential for impact.
• Build Customer-Centered Solutions: Design offerings that directly support the outcome your customer is seeking.
• Streamline Product Development: Reduce guesswork and rework by aligning features with clearly defined jobs.
• Enhance Collaboration: Give cross-functional teams a shared language and toolkit for decision-making.

Who Should Use These Frameworks?

JTBD frameworks are ideal for any team focused on innovation, product development, or improving customer experience. They’re particularly helpful for:

• Product managers: Prioritize roadmaps based on customer goals, not features alone.
• Marketers: Position offerings in ways that resonate with real world outcomes.
• Designers: Create more intuitive user experiences tied to specific progress customers want to make.
• Business leaders: Identify new market opportunities grounded in concrete user jobs.

By introducing JTBD frameworks, organizations gain a repeatable path from customer insight to innovation – making strategic planning more grounded, focused, and impactful.

Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) is one of the most recognized frameworks that supports Jobs To Be Done thinking. Developed by Tony Ulwick, it's a structured methodology that helps organizations innovate by focusing on the outcomes customers want to achieve – not just the tasks they perform.

While JTBD identifies what job a customer is hiring a product or service to do, ODI takes it further by clarifying how success is measured from the customer’s perspective. It's one of the most practical answers to the question: “How do we apply JTBD in product development?”

The Core Idea Behind ODI

Customers don’t buy products; they buy the outcomes those products help them achieve. ODI helps businesses first define what those desired outcomes are and then identify which are currently underserved. This creates a direct path to innovation by revealing where there is room to create value.

How Outcome-Driven Innovation Works

The ODI process follows a clear step-by-step approach. While organizations may adapt it based on their specific market research or user research methods, here are the key phases:

1. Define the Job to Be Done: Start by identifying the core task or broader objective the customer is trying to complete. For example, a job might be "manage weekly meals efficiently" or "decide on the best financial plan."
2. List Desired Outcomes: Capture all the metrics or outcomes customers use to judge the success of that job. Outcomes are usually framed as "minimize X" or "increase Y." For instance, a customer may want to “minimize food waste” or “maximize time saved.”
3. Prioritize Unmet Needs: Use qualitative or quantitative tools to assess which outcomes are important but poorly satisfied. This identifies opportunities with the highest potential for growth or innovation.
4. Generate and Test Solutions: Now that you know what to solve for, develop solutions specifically designed to achieve those underserved outcomes.

Why ODI is Effective

ODI eliminates much of the guesswork in traditional innovation efforts. It replaces vague brainstorming or feature dumping with a laser-focus on what the customer values most. That’s why it’s become a trusted method within many product teams and user research departments looking for data-driven paths to innovation.

When to Use Outcome-Driven Innovation

ODI is especially useful when:

• You’re launching a new product in an unfamiliar space and want to identify true customer needs before development begins.
• Your current products aren’t gaining traction and you need clarity on what customers are missing.
• You want to prioritize resources by focusing innovation around high-value outcomes.

By anchoring innovation efforts around precise, measurable outcomes, ODI turns customer insights into actionable strategies. For teams looking to apply JTBD in a structured, strategic way, it offers a clear and scalable model. As part of a broader set of user research methods, it amplifies the voice of the customer in every decision.

Job mapping is a structured way to break down what a customer is trying to accomplish, step by step. Rather than focusing on demographic details or purchase behavior, job mapping centers on the actual job the customer is hiring a product or service to do.

Developed by Anthony Ulwick, job mapping is a core component of the Jobs to Be Done framework and a cornerstone of outcome-driven innovation. It shifts the focus from what your product is to what it helps people achieve – often in ways they couldn’t clearly articulate before.

Understanding the Step-by-Step Nature of Jobs

Each ‘job’ a customer performs can be broken into a job map – a universal set of action-based steps that reflect their process. For example, if someone is “organizing their family weeknight dinners,” the job map might include the following steps:

• Define what meals are needed
• Identify dietary preferences and restrictions
• Search for recipes or inspiration
• Shop for ingredients
• Prepare and cook the meal
• Clean up

By laying out the job this way, teams can identify moments of friction, unmet needs, or opportunities to add value. This makes job mapping one of the most effective user research methods to inform product development.

Why Job Mapping Matters

Job mapping helps teams zero in on the emotional, social, and functional customer needs tied to each step of a process. Instead of innovating based on assumptions or surface-level feedback, you’re now grounded in what people are actually trying to accomplish – and where they’re getting stuck.

This method is particularly helpful in:

• Prioritizing product features based on high-friction points
• Discovering underserved segments or use cases
• Creating a shared understanding across teams for user goals

When combined with other JTBD methods for customer research, job mapping paints a fuller picture of the job context – so innovation work feels more strategic, and less like guesswork.

There isn't just one way to apply Jobs To Be Done thinking. Several innovation frameworks support JTBD, and each caters to different goals and organizational workflows. Whether you’re part of a product team, a marketing group, or a business strategy unit, picking the right approach is key to success.

1. Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)

What it’s best for: Prioritizing product development decisions based on unmet customer needs.

ODI, created by Tony Ulwick, links customer insights directly to innovation strategy. It quantifies desired outcomes across dimensions like importance and satisfaction, allowing teams to prioritize features more objectively. Ideal if your team needs to justify development with a data-backed process that reduces guesswork.

2. Clayton Christensen’s JTBD Model

What it’s best for: Understanding the emotional and social drivers behind customer decisions.

This version emphasizes the “why” behind customer behavior. It’s helpful when you're developing brand narratives, improving differentiation, or mapping user research methods. Less quantitative, but strong on storytelling and understanding consumer context.

3. Switch Interviews (by Bob Moesta)

What it’s best for: Exploring customer decision-making when switching from one solution to another.

Switch interviews are a great tool for understanding the motivations and anxieties tied to adopting something new. They're qualitative, but reveal deep emotional and social dynamics across a customer journey.

How to Choose

Rather than choosing just one, many teams benefit from combining approaches. For example:

• Use job mapping to define the process
• Apply outcome-driven innovation to prioritize development needs
• Include switch interviews for understanding adoption context

At their core, these frameworks that support Jobs To Be Done thinking are all about uncovering what your customers are trying to achieve – and helping you align innovation around those jobs more effectively.

Now that you understand the value of JTBD frameworks like Outcome-Driven Innovation and job mapping, how do you bring them into your day-to-day work? Applying JTBD starts with a mindset shift – from asking “What should we build?” to “What job is our customer trying to get done?”

Make JTBD a Team-Wide Approach

To get the most value, JTBD should be embraced across your product, marketing, and strategy teams. That shared language leads to better collaboration and more customer-centered decisions.

Here’s how to introduce JTBD thinking across your workspace:

• Educate cross-functional teams. Host kickoff sessions to explain core JTBD ideas and frameworks through real examples.
• Start small with one job map. Choose a key customer process and build a step-by-step job mapping process together – this promotes hands-on learning.
• Use JTBD in discovery interviews. Update your research guides to explore not just the what, but the why. Ask: “What were you trying to accomplish?” “What made that difficult?”

Bring JTBD Into Product Development Workflows

Once your team has mapped jobs and identified desired outcomes, plug those insights into product roadmaps or customer journey workflows. These can shape:

• Feature prioritization and sprint planning
• Customer segmentation by job type
• Go-to-market messaging that speaks to real customer goals

JTBD doesn’t replace traditional market research – it complements it. Use JTBD thinking alongside your qualitative insight work, quantitative studies, and behavioral data analyses for a complete view of the customer lens.

Watchouts and Best Practices

JTBD methods rely on rich, qualitative context. That means trained moderators, thoughtful interview design, and an open mindset are essential. It can be easy to jump straight to solutions, but the real value lies in diagnosing the job first.

Keep your language customer-centered. Avoid defaulting to product features. Instead, ask: “Where is this person getting stuck? What would make that job easier, better, or more effective?”

When done well, applying JTBD creates a common purpose – helping customers succeed in what they’re really trying to do. And that’s the recipe for true business growth.