Jobs to Be Done (JTBD)
Jobs to be done (JTBD) is a framework that frames products as things customers "hire" to make progress on a specific job — a goal or problem in their life or work.
The core idea is that people do not really want products; they want progress. A customer hires a product to get a job done, and they will fire it for something better the moment it serves the job more poorly. Focusing on the underlying job — rather than on demographics or features — explains why people switch, what they truly compare you against, and which improvements actually matter.
It matters because it keeps a team anchored to customer motivation instead of internal feature lists. When you understand the job, you can tell the difference between a request that serves a deep need and one that is just noise. It reframes feedback: a feature ask is a clue about a job the customer is struggling to get done.
Reading feedback through a jobs lens turns scattered requests into patterns of motivation. In Feedjolt, grouping similar requests makes the recurring underlying jobs visible, so teams build for the progress customers are trying to make rather than for the literal feature they named.