Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework Presentation Template

Jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) is a way of understanding why customers buy and use products. Instead of asking what customers are like (demographics) or what they do (behaviors), it asks what job they're hiring the product to do.

The framework is straightforward. Presenting it to a team that's new to it requires care — it's easy to introduce JTBD as jargon-heavy theory and lose the room before the application becomes clear.

What to Establish Before the Framework

Two things need to be true before JTBD is useful to a team:

1. The team has accepted that understanding customer motivation is a strategic priority, not a research department concern.
2. There's specific research — customer interviews, at minimum — that grounds the presentation in real data rather than internal assumptions.

If neither is true, the JTBD presentation becomes a theoretical exercise. Do the research first, or at minimum, frame the presentation as "here's what JTBD is and why we're about to invest in the research to apply it."

Slide Structure

Slide 1: The Core Idea

One slide. "Customers don't buy products — they hire them to get a job done." Include a concrete example relevant to your product category.

The milkshake example (people buying milkshakes during their morning commute for a different reason than people buying them in the afternoon with their kids) is well-known and accessible. If you have a product-specific example from your own customer interviews, use that instead — it's more credible.

Slide 2: Why This Changes How We Build

The practical implications. Teams focused on features ask "what do customers want?" Teams focused on JTBD ask "what progress is the customer trying to make?" The answers lead to different product decisions.

Show a specific example: a product decision that looks one way through a features lens and differently through a JTBD lens.

Slide 3: Job Statement Structure

The formal job statement structure: "When [situation], I want to [motivation], so I can [expected outcome]."

Walk through how to construct a job statement from customer research. What does a good job statement look like vs. a weak one? A strong job statement is solution-agnostic — it describes the progress the customer wants to make, not the feature they asked for.

Slide 4: Research Findings — Primary Jobs

The main jobs you've identified through customer interviews, presented as job statements. For each job:

• The job statement
• How many interview participants expressed this job
• Representative quotes that illustrate it
• The context or situation in which this job arises

Slide 5: Job Map

A visual representation of the steps a customer goes through to complete a primary job. JTBD job maps follow a standard structure: Define → Locate → Prepare → Confirm → Execute → Monitor → Modify → Conclude.

Map your customer's job to this structure. This is the foundation for identifying where your product helps and where it falls short.

Slide 6: Opportunity Scoring

For each job step, assess two dimensions: importance (how critical is this step to the customer?) and satisfaction (how well does the current solution — your product or a competitor — perform this step?). Steps that are highly important but undersatisfied are opportunities.

This slide is where JTBD becomes a prioritization tool rather than just a research framework. High-importance, low-satisfaction job steps should be showing up on your product roadmap.

Slide 7: Competitive Landscape Through JTBD Lens

Who else is a customer hiring to do this job? Often the answer includes solutions that don't appear in a traditional competitor analysis. A customer might hire a spreadsheet, a phone call with their team, or a manual process instead of (or alongside) your product.

Understanding the full competitive set for a job reveals threats and opportunities that feature-level analysis misses.

Slide 8: Implications for Product Strategy

What do these jobs tell you about where to invest? Concrete product or marketing directions implied by the opportunity scoring:

• Which job steps represent the biggest product opportunities?
• Which jobs are we currently undersupported in?
• Are there jobs we're trying to address that customers don't actually care about?

Slide 9: Implications for Marketing

JTBD also informs how to talk about the product. Customers hire products in specific situations for specific outcomes. Marketing that speaks to the job context and desired outcome resonates more than marketing that lists features.

Show an example: how the JTBD insight changes the messaging for a specific customer segment or use case.

Slide 10: Next Steps

What does the team do with this? Common next steps after a JTBD presentation:

• Run additional customer interviews focused on specific job steps with low satisfaction scores
• Conduct opportunity scoring with a broader sample
• Run a design sprint focused on the highest-opportunity job steps
• Revise positioning or messaging based on the primary jobs identified