The Role of a Jobs Definition Document in Customer Management
In enterprise software companies, challenges often arise that test the strength of customer relationships. These challenges may stem from dissatisfaction with a product or service, requiring more than just routine customer service solutions. Such urgent issues often escalate to the sales or executive teams, as they directly impact customer satisfaction, expansions, renewals, and revenue.
Enter the Jobs Definition Document (JDD). This tool empowers product managers to address these high-stakes situations effectively. It serves as a roadmap for action, facilitating two key outcomes:
- Internal Alignment: The JDD helps bring a shared understanding of the customer's problems across all internal departments.
- Customer Communication: The JDD enables the product leader to clearly communicate the current capabilities to solve the customer's problems and outline a mutually beneficial action plan.
By providing a structured approach to crisis management, the JDD is invaluable in averting financial repercussions like revenue loss or delays.
A Jobs Definition Document (JDD) is a crucial discussion artifact between stakeholders within the vendor organization and the customer organization. It aims to:
Identify all the critical jobs that a customer wants to accomplish.
Describe the current capabilities that help the customer perform these jobs.
Clarify the status and scope of these capabilities.
Key Sections of a JDD
A comprehensive JDD is composed of the following main sections. Each bullet point can be a slide.
Business Scenario Description: A brief context to understand the environment in which the customer operates.
List of Customers' Jobs-to-be-Done: Enumerate the various tasks or objectives the customer aims to achieve.
Status of Capabilities: Describe the maturity or availability of capabilities that will assist the customer.
Job Overviews: A succinct explanation of each job in one slide.
Name of the Job To Be Done
Job Description
Diagram: A visual representation of each job-to-be-done.
Assumptions, Risks, and Limitations: Qualifications that may affect the capabilities or jobs.
Next Steps: Action items for moving forward.
Format of a JDD
Since the discussion artifact may have to be presented to an internal and external audience in a short session, a slide presentation format is good.
Trigger for Creating a JDD
A JDD usually originates when a product leader identifies that a current or potential customer has specific, unmet needs hindering their ability to implement or purchase a solution. The document is usually created when there is an unforeseen problem or escalation because the normal customer support or product research process does not meet the needs of the customer.
Assumptions
A JDD is not a contract or a Statement of Work (SoW).
This guide assumes that the readers are familiar with the jobs-to-be-done framework by Prof. Clayton Christensen
A JDD is not an appropriate artifact to address site reliability or billing issues.
