LEARN CONCEPT (0.5 hr) Jobs Analysis and Selection of Focal Product for Course

This is a course on product management. We use the word product comprehensively to include goods, software, or services that are delivered by an enterprise to its customers. A synonym for product is solution.

Clayton Christensen articulated an influential framework for thinking about products called "jobs to be done." You can read the full article on the concept here, if you'd like.

Christensen-Jobs-SMR-2007.pdf Download Christensen-Jobs-SMR-2007.pdf

However, it's not a particularly deep idea, nor one that requires a few thousand words to explain. Put simply, customers buy products and services to "do a job." We'll use this language because it is simple and clear, and because it emphasizes the "what" and not the "how." Always keeping the "what" perspective is good discipline for product managers.

Synonyms used for "jobs to be done" are:

• Product function
• Customer needs
• Gap
• Problem
• Pain point

Several assignments in this course will focus on a product that interests you. For this assignment, select a focal product. (You can change it later, but I want you to at least make an initial pick.)

Ideally the product would fall into one of these categories, in decreasing order of preference:

• A product you are responsible for in your current, future, or recent job.
• A product offered by a company you have something to do with.
• A product you are exploring as a possible entrepreneurial pursuit.
• A product that just interests you personally.

Enter as plain text a description of the product, including (a) product name (or working label), (b) description of the target customer, (c) what job the product currently does (or will do) for the customer, (d) your relationship to the product, if any. Please keep your response shorter than 100 words.