Jobs to be Done (JTBD) + Market Definition

Credits: JTBD theory — Clayton Christensen. Job statements / job maps / outcome statements — Tony Ulwick's Outcome-Driven Innovation. Customer-segment discipline — Steve Blank.

Core definition: a market is a group of people and the job they are trying to get done. Not a product category, not a demographic. People don't want a quarter-inch drill; they hire products to make progress in a circumstance.

Job Statement — the three pitfalls (check every statement against all three)

1. Your words, not the customer's. You may use specialist jargon; the customer doesn't. Ask: "would a customer use these words to describe their needs / outcomes / experience?"
2. The customer is not you. Don't assume they already know the problem you want to solve or the product you haven't built. The job statement reflects the customer's current knowledge and awareness.
3. Describe the situation, not your solution. The customer has a bigger perspective; your (future) product merely has a role in it. "Get my stitching done without leaving the house" — not "use my booking app".

Form: verb + object + context ("reach the airport on time from home", not "use my taxi app").

The sequence

1. Segment by job, not demographics — people sharing the same job + circumstances. Identify 2–4 archetypes within the chosen segment.
2. Focus Job — the one job statement you're building around, for the chosen archetype.
3. Job Steps — the customer's process to get the job done end-to-end (their map, today, without you). Each step is a place where they measure success.
4. Outcome Statements — how the customer measures success at each step. Form: direction + metric + object + context ("minimize the time it takes to verify the fit before the event"). Draft 5–10; mark each [ASSUMPTION] until customers rank them.
5. Rank with customers (importance × current satisfaction). Important + unsatisfied = the underserved outcomes worth building for. Rankings by the founder or the AI are placeholders, labeled as such.

Consistency checks

• Does the market definition (people + job) match the market opportunity chosen in /where-to-play (application + customer)? Flag mismatches.
• Do the outcome statements connect to the pains/gains in /value-proposition-canvas? They should be the same evidence, different lenses.
• Every job statement, step, and outcome drafted before interviews is [ASSUMPTION] — end with which ones the founder should rank-test with real customers, and how (/customer-discovery).

Ledger discipline (v2): reference Belief Ledger IDs ([A4], [F7]) for every claim; propose new/changed items in a closing "Ledger delta" section rather than restating claims — restated claims drift.

Fill-in templates: TEMPLATES.md in this skill's folder — copy the structures into your project's discovery/ and fill with labels.