Educate Product Managers and Product Designers about how to use the Jobs-to-be-Done framework in a real-life scenario.
In CareRev’s Product past, Product decisions had traditionally been made based on reactions to our constantly-changing market. New Product leadership at CareRev in 2023 decided to initiate a customer-centric focus instead, focused on customer Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD). Unfortunately, many of our team members within the Product department were unfamiliar with this framework, and craved training on it.
As leaders of the Product organization, we decided to plan a Product off-site in order to plan for our upcoming quarter. I designed this workshop as a supplemental session to complement the work done at this off-site, and to help lay a foundation for contributors to build our customer-focused culture on.
I opened the workshop with a presentation to set expectations about the workshop, and to introduce the Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) framework. They learned what it is, when to use it, and why it’s useful through Machete’s (AKA Danny Trejo’s) infinite wisdom.
I had asked for a pair of volunteers prior to the workshop—a Product Manager and Designer—who would be my “guinea pigs” for the duration of the workshop. This pair first determined what problem they were trying to solve, crafted a short script for a mock user interview, and then role-played a user session with another volunteer from the group.
These role-playing exercises helped give the group context on when to use JTBD, and how to integrate job-related questions into their existing research process.
Lastly, the group crafted a job story together from the findings of their mock user session. I presented the typical job story format, and our volunteers simply filled in the blanks.
This simple exercise helped demonstrate the job story format, but also built confidence in participants. This framework isn’t scary at all!
Though this workshop may have been better done in-person for more group participation, overall it was met with enthusiasm by all attendees.
The JTBD framework isn’t necessarily a new concept, but it’s not as well-known as it should be, as it’s an excellent and simple way to empathize with and center the customer’s needs. I was excited to be able to share this knowledge with a team of talented and passionate Product contributors.
