Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Why JTBD Belongs at the Core of Product Management
2. How We Turn Customer Jobs into Strategic Focus Areas
3. How We Prioritize Product Investments Using Unmet Needs
4. How JTBD Aligns Cross-Functional Teams
5. How Our Portfolio Companies Generate Growth with JTBD
6. How Our JTBD Method Creates Superior Equity Value
7. Our AI-Powered JTBD Platform
8. Conclusion: JTBD as Our Product Operating System
   
   

Introduction: Why JTBD Belongs at the Core of Product Management

For private equity sponsors, creating equity value through product innovation presents significant challenges. Portfolio companies often struggle with roadmap decisions, feature prioritization, and aligning cross-functional teams. At thrv, we implement our proprietary Jobs to be Done (JTBD) method to transform these challenges into superior equity returns.

We use our proprietary and patented Jobs to be Done (JTBD) method to move our portfolio companies beyond opinions, requests, and feature wishlists. Instead, we provide a stable framework rooted in what customers are trying to achieve. With our JTBD method, product management becomes a discipline of reducing customer struggle and improving the speed and accuracy of job execution.

This guide shows you how we make JTBD actionable inside product workflows—from discovery to delivery. We cover how we:

• Turn customer jobs into strategic focus areas
• Use JTBD to prioritize features and roadmap decisions
• Align cross-functional teams around measurable customer progress
• Create equity value with our JTBD method in our portfolio companies
  
  

Traditional product management often relies on customer personas or market segments based on demographic characteristics. But these approaches can lead teams astray because they focus on who the customer is rather than what they're trying to accomplish. Our JTBD method shifts the focus to customer goals that remain stable over time, even as technology and solutions evolve.

For example, while CRM software has changed dramatically over the decades, the underlying job of "acquiring new customers" remains constant. By focusing on this stable job rather than fluctuating features or technologies, we create lasting customer value and accelerate growth in our portfolio companies.

How We Turn Customer Jobs into Strategic Focus Areas

Every product exists to help someone get a job done. But too often, product strategy is shaped by internal pressures: sales feedback, competitive features, or executive ideas. Our JTBD method refocuses strategy on what matters most: improving how well the customer can achieve their goal.

Step 1: Identify the Core Functional Job

We start by uncovering the core job the customer is trying to get done, regardless of the product. This job is stable over time and independent of technology. For example:

• "Get to a destination on time"
• "Ensure equipment uptime"
• "Restore blood flow to cardiac tissue"
  
  

We use customer interviews to surface the true job-to-be-done. We look for phrases that describe what customers want to achieve, not the solution. When interviewing customers, we focus on questions like "What are you trying to accomplish?" rather than "What features do you want?"

One of our portfolio companies in the data analytics space found that their customers weren't just trying to "analyze data" but were actually trying to "make confident decisions based on trustworthy insights." This subtle but important distinction changed their product strategy from feature parity to trust-building capabilities.

Step 2: Break the Job into Steps

Every customer job is a process. We break the job into 10–20 logical steps, from planning to execution to evaluation. This creates a map of how customers approach the job today—and where they struggle.

A typical job follows this pattern:

• Define/understand what needs to be done
• Plan how to do it
• Gather necessary resources
• Execute the core tasks
• Monitor progress
• Make adjustments
• Conclude and evaluate
  
  

For example, if the job is "ensure equipment uptime," steps might include "determine maintenance schedule," "identify potential failure points," "order replacement parts," "perform preventive maintenance," and "verify system performance."

This job mapping provides a comprehensive view of the customer's process and identifies where product innovations can have the greatest impact on equity value.

Step 3: Quantify Customer Needs

Each job step includes measurable needs: how fast, how accurately, and how easily customers want to perform it. These needs are not feature requests; they're metrics. For example:

• "Determine the optimal route"
• "Identify a failed system element"
  
  

A well-defined customer need has two components:

• An action (e.g. determine, increase, ensure)
• A variable (arrival time, optimal route, alternative route)
  
  

This structure makes needs quantifiable and measurable, which is essential for product strategy. When we can measure how well a solution satisfies these needs compared to alternatives, we gain objective criteria for decision-making in our portfolio companies.

Step 4: Identify Unmet Needs with Customer Effort Scores

We use surveys to identify where customers struggle the most in getting their job done. For each need in the job, we calculate Customer Effort Scores (CES) by measuring the percentage of customers who report difficulty in executing that need with speed and accuracy.

Higher Customer Effort Scores reveal the most underserved needs—areas where customers struggle with significant effort to get their job done. These become our strategic growth targets.

At thrv, we focus our portfolio companies on the needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores, as these represent the areas where customers struggle most to get their job done and where they're most willing to pay for better solutions.

Step 5: Define Strategic Focus

We base our strategy on:

• The job to be done
• The needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores
• The customer segment that struggles most and has high willingness to pay
  
  

This approach ensures our portfolio companies' strategies target real pain points that drive retention, conversion, and revenue growth.

By identifying specific segments that struggle most with their job-to-be-done and have high willingness to pay, we focus not just on what to build, but for whom. This clarifies decision-making and resource allocation, creating equity value with less risk.

How We Prioritize Product Investments Using Unmet Needs

Most roadmaps are overloaded, unclear, or politically negotiated. Our JTBD method gives our portfolio company product teams a clear, objective way to prioritize: focus on the features that best satisfy the needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores to create superior equity returns.

Prioritization Based on Customer Effort Scores

Once we've identified unmet needs, we prioritize initiatives by how well they improve the speed and accuracy of job execution. For each roadmap item, we ask:

• Which job step does this support?
• Which need with a high Customer Effort Score does it address?
• How will it improve the speed and accuracy of execution?
  
  

This turns feature debates into measurable trade-offs and reduces the risk of failed product investments.

Traditional prioritization frameworks like RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort) or ICE (Impact, Confidence, Effort) often rely on subjective estimates of impact. Our JTBD method makes impact more objective by tying it directly to quantified Customer Effort Scores.

For example, instead of saying "We think this feature will have high impact," our portfolio companies can say "This feature addresses a need where 78% of our target segment reports significant difficulty in execution."

Score Ideas by Customer Impact

We use a clear scoring system to evaluate initiatives:

• Customer Effort Score (percentage of customers struggling)
• Execution speed improvement
• Execution accuracy improvement
• Reach (size of struggling segment)
• Feasibility and development effort
  
  

This guides our portfolio companies to make informed, customer-driven decisions—and communicate them clearly to stakeholders.

A practical approach is to create a simple table for each potential feature:

At thrv, we provide this transparent scoring system in our software to guide product teams in defending priorities with data rather than opinions, creating equity value with less risk.

Align the Roadmap with Strategic Goals

With our JTBD method, every item on the roadmap should:

• Solve a real customer struggle with high Customer Effort Scores
• Improve key business metrics (speed, accuracy, activation, retention)
• Advance strategic focus areas
  
  

This keeps our portfolio companies' roadmaps lean, focused, and directly tied to customer success and equity value creation.

A common challenge in product management is connecting feature development to business results. Our JTBD method bridges this gap by showing how improvements in job execution speed and accuracy directly impact customer metrics like activation and retention.

One SaaS portfolio company reorganized their entire roadmap around job steps and needs with high Customer Effort Scores. We found that by focusing 80% of their development resources on the top 5 needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores, we could address the issues driving 65% of their churn—a much more effective allocation than their previous feature-driven approach. This approach accelerated their growth rate and increased their valuation multiple.

How JTBD Aligns Cross-Functional Teams

One of our JTBD method's biggest strengths is its ability to create alignment. When every team shares the same view of the customer's job, silos break down and collaboration improves, driving faster growth.

Shared Language of the Customer's Job

Our JTBD method gives every function—product, engineering, design, marketing, customer success—a shared vocabulary:

• Job: what the customer wants to accomplish
• Job steps: how they do it
• Needs: what defines success
• Customer Effort Scores: where they struggle
  
  

This clarity reduces miscommunication and anchors conversations in customer value.

When different departments use different customer frameworks, misalignment is inevitable. Marketing might focus on personas, while product uses user stories, and sales emphasizes pain points. Our JTBD method unifies these perspectives by providing a common understanding of customer goals.

For example, when we implemented our JTBD method across a healthcare software portfolio company, the product and marketing teams—previously at odds over priorities—were able to align their roadmaps and campaigns around the same set of job steps with high Customer Effort Scores, accelerating growth.

Connect Metrics to Progress

Instead of measuring success by feature delivery or ticket velocity, we direct our portfolio companies to track:

• Time to complete key job steps
• Accuracy of task execution
• Effort required to achieve results
  
  

These are metrics that matter to customers—and that unify product and GTM teams.

We solve a common struggle for product teams: measuring the real impact of their work. By defining success metrics in terms of job steps and customer needs, they can draw direct connections between product changes and customer results.

For instance, rather than measuring "number of reports generated," a BI tool might track "time required to identify sales trends"—a metric that directly corresponds to the customer's job. When this metric improves, the product team knows they've created real value that drives equity returns.

Align Messaging and Positioning

We structure marketing and sales activities around JTBD to shape:

• Value propositions
• Campaign messages
• Sales enablement content
  
  

By tying every message to a customer struggle, our portfolio companies' positioning becomes clearer and more resonant.

Traditional feature-based messaging often fails to connect with prospects because it focuses on what the product does rather than the progress the customer wants to make. Our JTBD messaging addresses this by speaking directly to customer struggles and desired results.

A project management platform we operate revised their marketing language based on our JTBD research. Instead of highlighting "task assignment features," we emphasized how the product "reduces time spent coordinating work status updates"—directly addressing a need with a high Customer Effort Score in their target segment. This improved marketing conversion rates and sales close rates.

Prioritize Internal Collaboration

We implement JTBD templates in sprint planning, product briefs, and design reviews. We make needs with high Customer Effort Scores a required input for any new initiative. This makes customer value part of the daily workflow.

Some practical collaboration tools we provide include:

• Job step templates for feature briefs
• Customer Effort Score dashboards for design reviews
• Customer struggle maps for sprint planning
  
  

These tools ensure that customer needs remain central throughout the development process, from conception to delivery.

How Our Portfolio Companies Generate Growth with JTBD

At thrv, we've transformed product strategy with JTBD across our portfolio. Here are some examples of our work:

SaaS Workflow Platform: Focused Roadmap

Context: The product team was pulled in multiple directions by customer feedback, sales requests, and internal ideas.

Our JTBD Implementation: We mapped the core job "Manage recurring team workflows" and identified the needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores in automation and tracking.

Result: Reduced roadmap bloat, increased feature adoption by 28%, and improved alignment across product and engineering, leading to accelerated growth.

This mid-market SaaS platform had a roadmap with over 200 potential features, causing development bottlenecks and team frustration. By applying our JTBD method, we found that 80% of customer value came from addressing just 7 needs with high Customer Effort Scores in the core job. We restructured their roadmap around these needs, eliminating dozens of low-impact features and focusing on what truly mattered to customers.

The result wasn't just better feature adoption—it was also increased development velocity as teams spent less time context-switching between disparate initiatives. This efficiency led to faster time-to-market and accelerated revenue growth.

Healthcare SaaS: Strategic Positioning

Context: The market was crowded, with little differentiation among solutions.

Our JTBD Implementation: We focused on the job "Ensure diagnostic accuracy for patient treatment." We identified needs with high Customer Effort Scores around real-time data visualization and access.

Result: Used needs with high Customer Effort Scores to reposition product in sales conversations, leading to 2x win rate in competitive RFPs and significant revenue growth.

This healthcare analytics portfolio company was struggling to differentiate in a market where competitors had similar feature sets. Through our JTBD research, we found that while all vendors claimed to support diagnostic decision-making, physicians were particularly struggling with their need to "reduce time to identify clinically significant patterns in patient data"—this need had a Customer Effort Score of 83%.

We repositioned the entire product around this high-struggle need, highlighting specific capabilities that addressed it better than competitors. Sales teams were trained to discuss this need early in conversations, which resonated strongly with clinical directors who recognized this struggle. This strategic repositioning led to a higher valuation multiple.

Mobile App for Daily Planning: Increased Retention

Context: High initial downloads but poor retention.

Our JTBD Implementation: We identified the job "Plan and prioritize daily tasks effectively." We focused product efforts on job steps related to scheduling and distraction management that had the highest Customer Effort Scores.

Result: Improved onboarding and core flows, increasing 30-day retention by 42% and driving revenue growth.

This productivity app portfolio company had strong app store ratings but struggled with a retention cliff after the first week. Our JTBD research revealed that users weren't abandoning the app because of missing features or bugs, but because it didn't help them with a critical job step: "adjust priorities when unexpected tasks arise." The Customer Effort Score for this need was 79%—indicating high struggle.

We redesigned their core screens to make reprioritization faster and more intuitive. We also created onboarding flows that demonstrated this capability. The result was not just better retention, but also higher engagement as users returned to the app throughout the day to adjust their plans. This improvement in retention directly increased customer lifetime value and equity returns.

These cases show how our JTBD method makes product decisions more focused, measurable, and aligned with real customer value to accelerate growth and create superior equity returns.

How Our JTBD Method Creates Superior Equity Value

At thrv, we use this process to make capital-efficient decisions that accelerate growth and increase exit multiples in our portfolio companies. Our JTBD method delivers superior equity returns through:

Faster Revenue Growth

When product investments target the needs with the highest Customer Effort Scores, our portfolio companies see:

• Higher conversion rates as products address real pain points
• Improved customer retention as jobs get done faster and more accurately
• Increased expansion revenue as products satisfy more job steps
  
  

Valuation Multiple Expansion

Our JTBD approach leads to multiple expansion by:

• Creating sustainable competitive advantages through better job execution
• Building products that get more valuable over time as more job steps are addressed
• Establishing clear market leadership by owning critical job steps
  
  

We've achieved 2-3x multiple expansion in portfolio companies by redefining their markets around jobs and establishing clear leadership in satisfying those jobs.

Reduced Product Investment Risk

Our structured approach significantly reduces the risk of failed product investments:

• Objective prioritization based on Customer Effort Scores
• Clear understanding of underserved segments willing to pay for solutions
• Precise measurement of product impact on job execution speed and accuracy
  
  

By quantifying customer struggle through Customer Effort Scores before development begins, we reduce the risk of building features customers don't want or need. This approach ensures capital is allocated efficiently to the highest-impact opportunities.

Our proprietary JTBD platform supports this process with the tools and frameworks needed to identify, quantify, and track customer needs across the organization. The result is a more predictable path to equity value creation.

Our AI-Powered JTBD Platform

AI is at the core of our JTBD methodology, not just an added feature. Our proprietary AI technology enables us to:

• Identify unmet customer needs in hours rather than weeks
• Analyze vast datasets to calculate Customer Effort Scores with unprecedented precision
• Generate actionable roadmap recommendations based on quantified customer struggle
• Scale our JTBD analysis across multiple markets simultaneously
  
  

This AI-powered approach gives our portfolio companies a critical speed advantage, turning customer insights into product innovations faster and with less risk than traditional methods.

Our AI platform automates the most time-consuming aspects of JTBD implementation:

• Processing and categorizing customer interviews to identify job steps
• Generating comprehensive need statements from qualitative data
• Calculating Customer Effort Scores to identify where customers struggle most
• Matching product features to specific needs with high Customer Effort Scores
  
  

This AI acceleration doesn't replace human judgment—it amplifies it. Our product teams focus on strategic decisions while our AI handles the analytical heavy lifting, creating equity value faster with less risk.

Conclusion: JTBD as Our Product Operating System

At thrv, we don't just advise—we execute. Our proprietary JTBD method and AI-powered platform transform how our portfolio companies create equity value through product innovation. For Limited Partners seeking superior returns, our operating approach delivers accelerated growth, multiple expansion, and reduced investment risk.

Our JTBD method isn't just a research approach—it's a product management system that:

• Anchors strategy in stable customer goals
• Prioritizes based on Customer Effort Scores
• Aligns teams around results that drive growth and equity value
  
  

With the right JTBD structure, product teams become more confident, aligned, and effective. Instead of debating ideas or chasing trends, they solve real customer problems with precision.

The power of our JTBD method lies in its ability to cut through the noise of feature requests, competitor moves, and internal opinions. By focusing on the stable, underlying jobs that customers are trying to accomplish, we build solutions with lasting value.

For product teams facing tough prioritization decisions, our JTBD method provides a clear framework: focus on the steps where customers struggle most to achieve their goals. For organizations dealing with misalignment between product, marketing, and sales, our JTBD method offers a shared language of customer value that transcends departmental perspectives.

And for limited partners seeking to create superior equity returns, our JTBD method illuminates opportunities that competitors miss by revealing the needs where customers struggle most.

At thrv, we implement JTBD as a core part of our process—from interviews to surveys to roadmap execution—creating equity value faster with less risk.