The Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook: Practical techniques for improving your application of Jobs-to-be-Done

Gotta say I love the book. Initially though, I was pissed. I love what the JTBD guys are doing, but I thought this book was too short and too expensive; however, after buying it and using it, I couldn't have been more wrong. I really like what the authors are doing here. When my co-founder and I were starting a new project, we used this as a reference manual, earmarking and flipping constantly between pages. He's not as well versed in JTBD, and this served as a great intro, as well as something I was easily able to reference while jumping between whiteboard sessions. Obviously the jobs-to-be-done approach is mind-blowing when it starts to click, but it's always a magical moment when you can actually see the lightbulbs going off in someone's head. This book helped us work through a lot of our early assumptions, especially having the ability to quickly jump between the forces diagram and the timeline (they look simple.. but there's a lot in there!! Pay close attention to finding Event #2). I doubt our sessions would have been nearly as effective had we not had this handbook. Initially, I hated that there was no Kindle version available (this is literally the first physical book I've bought in over 6 years!!!) but after getting the chance to use it recently, I wish more authors would follow this trend: Quick read, very targeted, very exacting advice that's easily applied and easily shareable. Five stars. "Don't judge a book by it's page count" ... (which is the little known follow up to the more common "Don't judge a book by it's cover") Note: I may have made that last part up :) Also, the authors also host a podcast on http://jobstobedone.org/ That's definitely worth the listens

This book could have been a long blog post -- it really is that short. Definitely feels shady, and if I see anything else by the authors in the future (book, media, etc) I'll have to spend the extra time to figure out what I'm actually getting vs. the trust I have in other business authors.

I hesitate to give negative reviews on Amazon because as an entrepreneur I realize how difficult and expensive it is to get customers. However, with this book, I'm making an exception. I received "Jobs-to-be-Done: The Handbook" over this weekend. To say that I'm disappointed with its content, price, and value would be an understatement. The authors have certainly not done their job of finding out the customer job-to-be-done. The book's total price including postage, which I paid, is US$27.21. And for that price, I received a book with a total of 66 pages. Note that page 1 is the inside title page of the book, page 2 contains a barcode and copyright information, page 3 ... well, you get the idea. Following these non-value-added pages are 9 more pages within the book that contain two or three lines describing the title and sub-title of a section. In addition, there are 8 blank pages. If one cares to do the arithmetic, the book has less than 50 pages of content, about half of which are half a page. One could argue that "size does not matter." However, in this case, size matters because the authors claim that the book is a handbook of the Jobs-to-be-Done approach. And frankly, it is NOT a handbook of the Jobs-to-be-Done approach, which is in essence functional analysis and anthropological observations dressed up in the emperor's new clothes. The above Jobs-to-be-Done book focuses on how to prepare and conduct interviews for a Jobs-to-be-Done project. If the book had presented its sub-title as "How to Prepare and Conduct Interviews for Jobs-to-be-Done Projects," then I would have regarded the book as moderately good. With its current title and misnomer of a claim, I'm generous in giving the book a rating of two stars. The book (as well as the authors) certainly did a poor job and a disservice to the Jobs-to-be-Done approach by positioning or rather "posturing" the book as a handbook. On another note, I've read and listened to previously published work by the authors especially on their website. And I regard those work as excellent and highly informative. That's why I was driven to buy their book despite its relatively high cost. I thought that I would receive a condensed handbook about the Jobs-to-be-Done approach. But alas, it was not meant to be. For over 15 years, I've been using deep functional analysis (which is highly logical but inwardly or technically focused) as well as the approach of Jobs-To-Get-Done (which involves anthropological thinking while being customer-focused). I've even seamlessly combined the Jobs-to-be-Done approach with the Su-Field method in TRIZ ("Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) as well as Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Consequently, I was expecting to see some new ideas in the so-called "Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook." But alas, it was not meant to be. In conclusion, I'd advise the authors to either withdraw the book from Amazon (to avoid damaging their hard earned reputation) or seriously modify the book's content and price. If the above handbook was meant to be a pretotype or prototype that is designed to gather customer feedback as well test pricing, then they should be aware that they are running the risk of damaging their credibility and reputation. For a pretotype or prototype of such a "Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook," the authors could have used pseudonyms. One more thing ... In theory, the Jobs-to-be-Done approach is fantastic. However, if one is looking at the "Jobs-to-be-Done Handbook," it is an extremely poor reflection of both theory and practice of the Jobs-to-be-Done method. Obviously, the authors did not bother to apply the Jobs-to-be-Done approach when writing the book. The authors simply ignored the customer Jobs-to-be-Done: the authors did not focus on the jobs that customers "hire" a business book to do. In all likelihood, the authors failed to validate assumptions about the customer job-to-be-done. Or to use a cliche, the authors did not eat their own dog food. The author's purely focused on the "producer's" Job-to-be-done. Isn't this a shame and poor demonstration of the Jobs-to-be-Done approach? What a waste of talent ... and a waste of time and money by customers. Clayton Christensen would surely be disappointed ...

it sucked

This book does exactly the job it was designed to do: be a cheat-sheet when doing JTBD interviews. I've given away every single copy I've owned--worn and well marked-up. It is always a well-appreciated gift. I'm buying yet another copy and will continue to do so when invariably I gift this copy to someone, and I will do so until I no longer care about building great products.

This is more of a pamphlet/booklet than an actual book, but it's sold for $ 25. I felt very much stolen. I found it extremely simplistic, and not at all useful for my research on how jobs-to-be-done can help someone build better software products. If you're interested in product design resarch, read The 4 Steps to the Epiphany, a MUCH better purchase for the buck, or Talking to Humans for that matter.

You can get all of this information for free on the Jobs-to-be-Done blog. The print quality is awful and there are noticeable uses of WordArt; self-published doesn't have to mean PowerPoint slides converted into book format.