 Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today we'll be talking about jobs to be done, a research framework. I'm Sudipta Jyotipakash, a principal product manager with Amazon. A little bit about myself. As I said, I'm with AWS today and I've had about five and a half years of experience working for AWS, building products that I'm passionate about. I'm a developer by heart, but by mindset and by passion, I am a product manager and I really enjoy bringing together technology and customer requirements together in the form of products, as I mentioned. And today we'll be talking about how do we best meet customer requirements through a mechanism which is pretty popular in the market, which is called the jobs to be done framework as such. And in the agenda, I'll be covering a couple of success stories of jobs to be done. Again, you don't necessarily want to rely on a research framework that's not well tested out or has delivered its own results. And jobs to be done is one of those frameworks where you'd like to really learn from those success stories and we'll be walking through a few of them. The second is the core tenets of jobs to be done. So what are the real core areas and opportunities that you need to dive into when you're going into jobs to be done as such? I'll be walking you through some of the things that you need to keep in mind while doing the exercise overall. We'll be walking through an example of jobs mapping canvas. This is something that I would have spoken through as an exercise overall, but there are multiple canvases out there that you could rely on. And these can also vary based on the industry that you're working on. And later we'll talk a little bit about the growth strategy matrix asset. So here's where you connect the dots between all the things that you delivered through the jobs to be done framework into why it matters to your business. Why does it matter to your company? How does it help you deliver the right products and in turn improve the growth of the products and strategy that you have with your business? So really trying to tie the circle together in order to make sure that you're able to hit the nail on the head when it comes to customer requirements and actually delivering what they need. I'll just summarize all of that in order to ensure that if you have any sort of overall feedback or areas that you'd like to dive deep into further, I could always go into that in more detail. A quick fact here, one of the reasons why I picked jobs to be done framework is I've done a previous session on customer feedback. And this is actually one of the areas that I got a lot of response on saying research frameworks are something that you'd like to hear more on. So if there's any other areas that you'd like me to dive deep into further, I'm more than happy to pick that up for the next couple of sessions. Quick shout out to strategy and then Harvard Business School. Strategy and is actually one of the pioneers who have used the jobs to be done framework in a very executable manner, have actually transformed many technologies and companies using this framework as such and I'll be talking about a few case studies and success stories that are actually published by strategy and again, another shout out to Harvard Business School. Fun fact is jobs to be done is actually a framework derived by a Harvard professor that's evolved over its time in the market as such and I'd like to sort of go back to its roots and actually look at some of the case studies there and that's sort of what I've done in this study today. Let's let's begin. I'll start talking about some of the success stories to begin with. This is one of my favorite door dash door dash is actually stayed relevant in a complex and ever changing market segment as such so delivery services are online delivery services is over the last decade become a very popular area for a lot of companies to innovate on. In fact, door dash is actually prefer is the preferred mechanism for customers to get their food delivered in the US by 44% of the population which is a pretty significant number. A large share of their customer base actually rely on door dash to be their significant form of any sort of transactions to be honest. Recently they have also launched something called dash pass and and beyond that it's called a double dash if I remember that rightly a double dash essentially is a mechanism for you to even, you know, collect your orders from various restaurants so making a trip along the 711s and CVS's of the world as such. So they've really done a great job actually focusing on what are some of the areas in which customers need innovation or what are some of the jobs that customers do on a daily basis and actually transform that into products or opportunities and services that they provide in order to better assist their customers if I may so they've grown from about 111 billion dollars pardon me to and they're expected to grow to 154 billion by 2023. Their market share as I mentioned is growing pretty significantly there I think, followed by Uberheats who have made significant investments in this segment but don't see the same sort of growth curve that door dashed us and it really is testament to how they focused on the jobs that are required to be done by customers and really cater to them well. I wanted to give a quick mix of different types of industries and another one that I found was Cordis. This is again another case study that's by a strategy in Cordis is essentially someone who's struggling in the angioplasty balloon market so healthcare industry and innovating there is a pretty hard space to crack into. They had dozens of areas in which they could innovate further on and they discovered some outcomes that were underserved or areas of the market that were underserved and created products to address them. They actually released 19 of them in which many of them became the first or second most popular in the market as such the market share went from 1% to 20% which is pretty significant over time. I believe their share price was pretty low and it went up to $20 before Johnson & Johnson actually acquired them as a company or it was a pretty successful story overall. So a full take on this you could actually read that on the strategy and website overall but again something where an area where they really innovated is to make sure that they built the relevant new products that are required for the market. And even if you look at the this as an example you don't necessarily need one product you can come up with a suite of products and release that to different market segments and they can all be successful just by focusing on the needs really clearly. Another example is Crawl on track. This is a disruption story if I may. Crawl on track was essentially faced with an opportunity so they were reflecting on some of the work that they've done in terms of their legal filing if I may when it comes to litigation processes overall and they discovered that documentation across legal industry is a pretty hard challenge overall and they wanted to disrupt it using an electronic document discovery solution overall and they had already had a couple of missteps if I may and had two failed attempts in the market overall but they really again adopted jobs to be done as a framework grew their business from 11 million to 200 million in seven years and they were also winning a lot of awards along the way which is sort of testament to building the right products right like you might have great customer track record and customer adoption but essentially being recognized within the industry as well as also testament to how well they have tried to sort of innovate overall. I like calling out this example because this is more disruptive of an area that they recognize to be an opportunity and we're able to innovate overall. So hopefully this gave you a quick understanding of what is the potential of jobs to be done as a framework and what it can mean to your business overall. I'll jump to core tenants of jobs to be done and let's just quickly walk through the nine tenants so that it's something that you use as a mental framework overall it's not something that's like you know you need to go through the checklist and walk then walk through them one by one it's just essentially making sure you understand the mental framework and what you need to do in order to get going with the jobs to be done canvas if I mean so some of the things that's important your people buy products and services to get their jobs done. It's kind of very simple and intuitive, but it's something that needs to really sink in while you're building your own products and services right. Customers essentially think of here's what I need to do I need to go buy something from the grocery or I need to essentially execute this task or even take a note of something. All of these are tasks that they take or jobs that they want to do want to accomplish. And you need to focus on those to an order in order for your products to be more more well service to your customers overall jobs are functional with emotional and social components to it so being very mindful of the setup in which the customer isn't is super critical. A lot of the examples that you would read across jobs to be done, especially and for example the manufacturing industry is where you kind of need to understand the situation the customers in and that they might be in a lot of stress and you don't necessarily want to give them eight buttons to actually deliver something or you want to essentially simplify the process for the customer through the emotional and the social situation that they're in so they are functional and in mindset as well. Third one's pretty critical in my mind jobs to be done are stable over time so what what we mean by this is it's not something that they're trying to do transitionarily you're not trying to do this as a work around you want to focus on the jobs that are important to customers and they do it iteratively. And you might think of this to be a small distinction between what are some of the manual tasks versus what can be automated as well, but the automation is sort of the product that you would like to be focusing on versus you know just a small hack that you would do across a manual task for example so think of what are stable and continuous that customers need addressed, and then actually iterate on how best to solve it. The fourth one here is jobs to be done is solution agnostic so something that I can't iterate more on you know this is something that happens quite often to us a lot of our customers come come to us with, here's how I want this product to be built. But that's not where the task is actually a solution at that point and it's what you need to get to is actually where the problem lies and understand the problem and the job that the customers trying to perform in order to get to the solution that they're looking for and many times when you sort of look at a pool of customers who are asking you for different things you might also land up with here's an underlying problem which are all connected to each other. And then realize it's a big area or an opportunity for you to invest in so it's pretty critical to focus on the problem and the job versus the actual solution itself. I'd like to sort of switch gears I think the last four are in in its own category or the last five are in its own category because until now you're sort of thinking about what are some of the guardrails that you want to have in mind before you start thinking about the process overall. But from the fifth tenant you kind of like switch gears to how are you actually executing on it. So success comes from making a job the unit of analysis rather than the product or the customer product rather than the product or the customer itself. So the unit of analysis is you're essentially not trying to go after here's a customer his job title is X Y and Z he's trying to you know a business analyst was trying to like come through a lot of data that that's essentially focusing on what the person is trying to accomplish rather than the actual workflow of the job itself so really focus on you know when the customer logs in as a business analyst what is the first thing he wants to do and you kind of walk through that job rather than it being the customer or the designation itself. It's just a quick simple example of it but think of the job to be the unit rather than the person or the product itself. The sixth one is a deep understanding of the customers job makes marketing more effective and the innovation far more predictable. I think this goes without saying but a deep understanding of the customer's job right. That's the key aspect of it where you're not just sort of superficially understanding like hey the customer basically just wants to go get groceries and come back but what kind of groceries are you trying to do this what are some of the areas in which or what are some of the things that they rely on in order to make that trip to go to the groceries. Those are the kinds of questions you want to ask yourself to be more effective. In terms of the innovation that you're trying to go after the seventh one is people want products and services that will help them get the job done better and and or more cheaply and I think the key here is you know to to get the job done and and or more cheaply. Simple example, earlier on was after dash and I keep going back to sort of like go and get the groceries aspect because I think it's such a simple thing that everyone relates to. You can go do that yourself but imagine if you're cutting down the time that you go to the grocery store pick up things and come back into buy half. I'd be paying a little more for it and that's sort of the trade off that you do when you're actually focusing on what the job is and how you actually price the service as well. Something that we'll get to in the growth strategy matrix but I'd like you to sort of be mindful of that aspect as well. One is people seek products seek out for products that enable them to get their entire job done in one platform. I think this is sort of very critical to keep in mind, especially when you're building sweets of products. A lot of SASP services is a lot of, you know, cloud platform services actually do do this really well where they think of the entire customer journey and actually use various tools or capabilities as chunks of things that they'd like to give it to customers in an alacard fashion as such. The reason why you do the alacard aspect is you may not have a customer use all of them and you might be catering to different personas but having them all on a single platform really provides that rich cohesive effect as such and if there is a specific persona to whom all the jobs, all the various parts of the platform resonate to and you're essentially getting the entire job done on a single platform and that's really powerful overall. The last one I think this is pretty critical as well. Innovation becomes predictable when needs are defined as metrics to customers use to measure success when getting the job is done. Really talking about the needs aspect of it right you kind of keep coming back to how defined as metric customers so you want to measure success and ensure that the needs are met in a clear fashion before you go after solutioning it and sort of building a product around it. Hopefully that sort of resonated with you as some of the core frameworks so it's almost like guardrails that you should keep in mind before jumping through the process itself. Because if you if you aren't in the mindset way thinking about more of the jobs than the persona or more of the the why of it than the how it's important to have that mindset before you see static security overall. So, without a lot of delay, I'm jumping to the jobs mapping canvas. Again, this is an example of a job map again by strategy and they've essentially had, they've created a template out of it and I'll be focusing more on what you see as the first eight categories will definitely go into the desired outcome aspect. But think of this to be a structure that helps you better understand the jobs that the customers are trying to perform. The eight I've kind of like broken it down as part of the cycle cyclical manner in which you would go about it. And first you define it so the determine objectives and plan their approach is you as the person who is doing the job, you're trying to identify what are you going after today. And is there a certain run book is there a certain rule book that you're essentially taking into account in order to achieve the job, you want to define that before you get started. And this is sort of where aim and objectives really need to be very clearly, clearly allocated. Locate is gather inputs required to get the job done. This can be as simple as collecting a lot of data or trying to identify where are the areas in which the jobs need to be done this can be a physical location, for example. So, here's where you're sort of understanding the where aspect while define a sort of the why the preparing is, you know, before you get this job done set up and organize the inputs. Think of it as if you're sort of like this data analyst, you have an objective in mind you have a problem statement that you're going after you know and you locate where the data lies. And then you set up and organize the input so you're kind of like making you're making sure you're looking at the right set of tables, you have the right access to the databases and so on and that's sort of the preparedness that you need to go after. The confirm again is confirm everything is in place to complete the job. This is again sort of like a checkpoint where while you've prepared everything you just want to sort of go back saying, Have I gotten all the relevant information in order to achieve the job that I'm trying to do because you might be set out to do a certain objective but along the way you might have the right data or the direction of the requirement itself is changed to confirm what you're going after and make sure that you have everything in place for it. Execute again, seems simple but execute and complete the job correctly is critical as well so once you have the relevant information and the relevant components as inputs. How are you able to execute the job correctly and executing the job is kind of like a process, if I may. So we talk about it as as a part of it to be monitoring as well so you make sure the execution is going on well during the job being completed as well monitor the progress and this can be let's say how long you took to complete the job was this the relevant amount of time that you intended to spend on it. The relevant inputs the relevant requirements that you put into place where they actually met accurately at the end, all of that is sort of the, the aspects of monitoring that you need to keep in mind. The modify is sort of this next step if monitoring indicates a problem adjust to fix it so here again so as a data analyst you might have gotten access to certain sets of data but now you realize that this might not be enough for you need further level of granularity that you don't necessarily have today as that so you might need to adjust your inputs you might might unfortunately also be updating your goal that you set out to achieve through your defined process and so on that's sort of the modify aspect of it. Conclude again, clean up dispose, we even say supplies here because there are jobs that are more physical and it might be, let's say, a lab equipment that you need to complete and clean up as such, those are the things that you need to do in order to end the job overall and this is to be sort of a cycle that you would have to complete and this is a good way to look at it, a different mind map where they thought talk about the job map canvas to be in three categories one is the preparation aspect, then the execution aspect and the conclusion is the preparation really just sets you up for better success in the execution and the conclusion happens to help you understand if you achieved what you were set out to or you at least concluded the right set of job activities after modifying any changes that you would like to as part of your execution plan overall. Again, going back to this framework and the reason why I sort of come back to it is they have a really good strategy and have a really good view of why this canvas matters the desired outcome section that you can see below. It essentially is an aftermath of how you use what you would have identified as part of the job mapping canvas to why it matters to your organization excuse me again. So I'm going to jump into growth strategy matrix here which is essentially a focus into the areas which come as an aftermath of your jobs to be done exercise. So once you identify the job, you have to take a step back and identify what is the opportunity that you have in hand and how would that product essentially be successful in the market, based on what you know of the job. So there are five different strategies that you could take in order to to propel growth for your organization so and based on the job and what you identify as an opportunity from it, pardon me, you will be able to place yourself into either of these quadrants overall or for either one of those quadrants plus the sustaining strategy aspects of it. And I'll come back to how they've also highlighted some aspects of monetization so charging less versus charging more or get the job done better versus worse. These are just ways in which you can think about how your product needs to be positioned and priced as an outcome of the strategy that you choose. So the first one is the differentiated strategy, where a differentiated strategy is effectively when target customer at a population that's underserved and willing to pay more to get the job done. So I think it kind of speaks for itself where you're saying you found something that's underserved something that customers identify as a need and think, okay, I'm willing to pay a few extra bucks to get it done. And you just go ahead and try to simply solve for it right and this actually can be destructive in many ways as well. So I'll pick another example here which is Netflix who essentially looked at a market which said customers are willing to pay to watch movies, but they're underserved by having to look at each one of the choices themselves. Go ahead and go to a kiosk and get the right CD or relevant disc in order to watch a movie. Why don't I make that a simpler process by giving a streaming services which have all of the options in a single platform. That's sort of where you identify the opportunity understood that the market is underserved and you know that customers are willing to pay for it. So they define that to be a differentiated strategy and work from there. A dominant strategy is where dominant requires a solution that gets the job job done better and more cheaply. So you have seen a couple of players in this market who have identified the opportunity, but needs to be up level a bit, and perhaps for you to remain competitive needs to be done cheaply as well. And this really depends on the type of situation to be honest, but think of it to be an already slightly crowded market, but there is a lot of opportunity for you to do things better overall. So pursuing such strategy is nearly always effective as it targets both underserved and overserved customer segments and non-consumers as well. So here you might actually be looking at, as they say, underserved and overserved customer segments while also another critical part is there is transfer of users from already existing products overall. So you have non-consumers and customers who are coming in from different products overall. So what this strategy focuses on is an area that's already been identified as an opportunity, but you're just trying to do better with it. So the next one is a disruptive strategy. Disruptive strategy is effectively when you're targeting a customer population that's overserved and not willing to pay more to get the job done. So it's a really tricky position to be at is where there are so many more options that's out there for the customer and the customer is not willing to pay more for the same service or similar service as such. And here is sort of where the angle of disruption comes in because you just don't want to do simply better than what everyone else is doing because there's not a lot of likely chances for you to convert customers. Just because the market is already saturated there. Fourth one is a discrete strategy. It only appeals to customers who find themselves in situations where no limited alternatives are available. Is this a very niche strategy as such? This is kind of where you're really trying to identify opportunities that essentially have had no alternatives. So here's sort of where you're trying to be the first in the market and you're identifying areas where you're sort of like stepping your toes into it and seeing whether is this really a viable strategy or not. Again, the difference between underserved and overserved industries are sort of where you've identified an opportunities clearly. And there are areas that people have already innovated on but discrete is kind of where you're almost sort of going in from scratch and understanding if there's a different way to look at a problem overall and where there's no limited alternatives as such. Sustaining strategy is kind of like right in the middle as I'll sort of go back to the entire strategy matrix overall. Sustaining strategy is essentially making sure that your business is sustaining the growth that it has today while the targeting customers that has very few underserved or overserved needs as such. While it's usually a poor strategy for new market entrance, of course, because you're trying to sustain something, it's often used by incumbents to retain customers. These can be, for example, a lot of technology companies that have survived over the last couple of decades, be it the Oracles of the World or SAPs of the world, they might find sustaining strategies to be a lot more useful in some of the product development that they do in order to ensure that their customer base is retained as such. As I mentioned, SAP as an example, one of the things that they focused on and innovated on is reinventing the wheel on how best to use databases as such. They launched HANA perhaps about a decade ago, which is essentially focusing on an area that is something that's relevant to the market. It's perhaps over-served by all the databases overall, but it's a sustaining strategy in order to make sure that the customer base that they have as part of SAP continues to be with them and essentially uses them as sort of their holistic platform. One of the tenants that we spoke about is customers see a need to do all of their jobs in a single platform and perhaps SAP saw that as an opportunity where while they provide ERP solutions, having the database aspect of it as part of their suite would be really useful for their customers and they basically sort of focused on that to be their product strategy overall. I sort of want to bring this all back into a circle as I mentioned. Differentiated strategy is kind of where the underserved customers are where you're going after, they want to get the job done better and you always have the opportunity to charge more. Dominant strategy is where you're winning all types of customers and underserved, over-served, etc. You're going after an area which you think is something where you have a strategy that you're confident will work overall. Discrete is when you're winning customers with limited options, so a lot of innovation is required there in my mind, but it is also sort of a risky area for you to be investing in. Disruptive, it sort of speaks for itself where there's an over-served opportunity, but you're trying to disrupt the market with something completely new and completely changing the way the customer looks at the job done. In summary, today we spoke about some of the success stories of jobs to be done. Again, I spoke about a few such as Cortis and Dordash who have been very successful in focusing on what the customer needs are and really delivering to that. The core tenets of jobs to be done were the nine that we walked through. This is think of them to be a mental framework that you need to be in before you sort of embark yourself on a journey using the research framework. Third is jobs to be done mapping canvas, which is essentially a tool or a mechanism that you could use. Again, there are a lot of canvases. I've just taken one as an example and sort of walk you through how best you capture the jobs that the customers are trying to do and are able to iterate on them. And lastly, we spoke about the growth strategy matrix, which is essentially tying all of what you learn from your mapping canvas to the growth strategy of your company and what are some of the growth strategies that you can imply based on what you have learned from your jobs overall. If you'd like to chat about jobs to be done further or just, I want to say hello. That's my email ID along with my LinkedIn. Feel free to sort of drop me in or drop me a text. I'm also interested in learning more about what else excites you about product management. I'd love to sort of see any new opportunities to collaborate on future. Thank you again. This is Sudipta.