What is Job Step Mapping?

Job Step Mapping is a structured methodology for breaking down a customer's Job To Be Done into a sequence of discrete steps that customers take to accomplish their goal.

This process creates a comprehensive map of the customer's journey through their job, identifying every action they take from the moment they decide to achieve a goal until they successfully complete it. The resulting job map serves as a foundation for identifying customer needs, pinpointing opportunities for innovation, and guiding product development decisions.

Unlike traditional process mapping that often focuses on how customers use specific products, Job Step Mapping is product-agnostic, capturing how customers think about and execute their goals regardless of what solutions they currently use. This approach reveals the universal structure of jobs that remains stable even as technologies and solutions evolve over time.

Why is Job Step Mapping important?

Job Step Mapping provides critical insights that drive successful product strategy and innovation:

1. Reveals the complete job

Many companies focus only on parts of customer jobs directly addressed by their current solutions, missing opportunities in adjacent steps. Job Step Mapping ensures a comprehensive understanding of the entire job from start to finish.

2. Creates a stable reference point

While products and technologies change rapidly, the fundamental steps in customer jobs remain relatively stable over time. This stability provides a reliable foundation for long-term product strategy.

3. Identifies hidden opportunities

By mapping all job steps, companies often discover underserved areas where customers struggle but no current solutions effectively help. These gaps represent prime opportunities for innovation.

4. Aligns organizations around customer goals

A well-constructed job map provides a shared understanding of customer goals across product, marketing, and sales teams, creating organizational alignment around customer outcomes rather than product features.

5. Guides resource allocation

Understanding which job steps matter most to customers helps companies allocate development resources to high-impact areas rather than spreading attention evenly across the product.

What are the components of a job step map?

A comprehensive job step map typically includes these components:

1. Universal Job Structure

Most jobs follow a universal pattern of steps that can be grouped into these categories:

• Define/Plan - Steps where customers determine requirements and plan their approach
• Locate/Gather - Steps where customers collect necessary inputs or resources
• Prepare/Setup - Steps where customers arrange conditions to execute the job
• Confirm/Validate - Steps where customers verify they're ready to proceed
• Execute - Core steps where customers perform the main activities of the job
• Monitor - Steps where customers track progress or performance
• Modify/Adjust - Steps where customers make changes based on monitoring
• Conclude - Steps where customers complete the job and assess results

This universal structure helps ensure the job map captures all relevant activities.

2. Sequential Job Steps

Within this universal structure, the job map identifies 10-20 specific sequential steps customers take to complete their job. For example, in the job of "getting to a destination on time," steps might include:

• Define when I need to arrive
• Determine the location of my destination
• Identify possible routes to the destination
• Select the optimal route based on conditions
• Determine when to depart

Navigate to the destination

• Monitor progress against expected arrival time
• Adjust route as needed to stay on schedule
• Park at or near the destination

Confirm on-time arrival

These steps represent what customers are trying to accomplish, not how they currently do it with specific products.

3. Step Descriptions

• For each step in the map, detailed descriptions explain
• What the customer is trying to accomplish
• Why this step is important to the overall job

How this step connects to preceding and following steps

• What decisions the customer makes during this step
• What information they need to execute this step effectively
• These descriptions ensure a complete understanding of each job step

4. Current Execution Methods

For each step, the job map may document:

How customers currently execute this step

• What products or services they use
• What workarounds or adaptations they employ
• What challenges or frustrations they experience

How much time and effort the step typically requires

This context helps identify opportunities for improvement over current approaches.

5. Job Step Metrics

The most sophisticated job maps include metrics for each step:

• Importance ratings indicating how crucial the step is to job success
• Satisfaction ratings showing how well current solutions perform
• Frequency metrics showing how often customers perform each step
• Time and effort measurements quantifying current execution burden
• Variability indicators showing how consistently the step can be performed

These metrics help prioritize which steps represent the greatest opportunities.

How do you create an effective job step map?

Creating a comprehensive job step map involves these key activities:

1. Define the job at the right level

Start by precisely defining the job to be mapped:

• Formulate the job as a verb + object + clarifier (e.g., "get to a destination on time")
• Ensure the job is defined independently of any specific solution
• Verify the job is not too broad (e.g., "be productive") or too narrow (e.g., "use a navigation app")
• Confirm the job represents a meaningful goal customers are trying to achieve
• Validate the job definition with customers before proceeding
• This clear definition establishes the boundaries for your mapping exercise.

2. Interview customers about their process

Conduct in-depth interviews with diverse customers to understand their job execution:

• Ask customers to walk through how they accomplish the job from start to finish
• Probe for steps that might be taken for granted or performed unconsciously
• Explore variations in how different customers approach the same job
• Investigate challenges, workarounds, and adaptations at each step
• Record the sequence and connections between steps
• These interviews provide the raw material for your job map.

3. Observe job execution in context

Whenever possible, observe customers actually performing the job:

• Watch customers execute the job in their natural environment
• Note steps that customers perform but don't mention in interviews
• Pay attention to emotional responses during different steps
• Document tools, resources, and information used at each step
• Capture the time and effort required for each step

These observations reveal aspects of the job that customers may not articulate.

4. Structure the job map

Organize your findings into a coherent job map:

• Arrange steps in their natural sequence from job initiation to completion
• Ensure steps represent what customers are trying to accomplish, not how they do it
• Verify that steps are solution-agnostic and would remain relevant even as technologies change
• Check that steps are at a consistent level of granularity
• Confirm the map includes all major categories in the universal job structure

This structuring creates a comprehensive, logically organized representation of the job.

5. Validate and refine the map

Test your job map with customers and stakeholders:

• Review the map with customers to ensure completeness and accuracy
• Validate the sequence and relationships between steps
• Test the map across different customer segments to ensure it's universally applicable
• Share the map with internal stakeholders to build consensus
• Refine based on feedback until you have a stable representation of the job
• This validation ensures your job map accurately represents the customer's perspective

What are the common challenges in Job Step Mapping?

Solution-centered thinking

Many teams struggle to separate what customers are trying to accomplish from how they currently do it with existing solutions. This leads to job maps that simply describe product usage rather than capturing the underlying job.

Missing implicit steps

Customers often perform certain job steps unconsciously or take them for granted, making these steps easy to miss during research. Examples include verification steps, preparation activities, or monitoring behaviors that customers may not mention unless specifically prompted.

Inconsistent granularity

Job maps sometimes mix high-level and detailed steps, creating maps where some portions are much more detailed than others. Maintaining consistent granularity ensures the map is usable for innovation purposes.

Organizational bias

Teams often emphasize job steps that align with their current products or services while giving less attention to steps outside their current focus. This creates incomplete maps that miss important opportunities.

Premature solution focus

There's a natural tendency to jump immediately to solution ideas while mapping the job, rather than fully understanding the current process. This can lead to superficial understanding and missed innovation opportunities.

How do you use a job step map once it's created?

1. Identify customer needs within each step

For each step in the job map, identify 5-10 specific needs that measure how quickly and accurately customers can execute the step. These needs are typically formulated as:

• Actions customers must take (determine, calculate, verify, etc.)
• Variables they must establish (route options, departure time, etc.)
• For example, in the step "Select the optimal route," needs might include
• Determine which route will take the least time
• Identify which route has the least variability in travel time
• Calculate how different routes affect arrival time
• Determine if any routes have restrictions or limitations

These detailed needs become the foundation for identifying innovation opportunities.

2. Measure importance and satisfaction

Conduct quantitative research to determine:

• How important each job step is to customers
• How satisfied they are with current solutions for each step
• Which steps have the largest gaps between importance and satisfaction

These measurements reveal which job steps represent the greatest opportunities for innovation.

3. Analyze competitive performance

Assess how well existing solutions, including your own products, perform on each job step:

• Identify which steps competitors address well or poorly
• Discover "white space" where no solutions effectively address important steps
• Determine where your current offerings have advantages or disadvantages
• Map potential disruptive threats that might better address specific steps

This competitive analysis reveals strategic innovations for differentiation.

4. Prioritize innovation focus

Based on your analysis, prioritize which job steps to address:

• Focus on steps with high importance but low satisfaction
• Target steps where competitors perform poorly
• Consider steps that enable or enhance the value of other steps
• Prioritize steps with clear economic impact for customers

This prioritization guides resource allocation for maximum impact.

5. Develop job-centered solutions

Generate solution concepts specifically designed to help customers execute priority job steps:

• Create multiple approaches to addressing each high-priority step
• Evaluate concepts based on how much they improve job execution
• Test concepts with customers to validate job performance improvement
• Refine concepts based on customer feedback
• Develop roadmaps that address multiple job steps over time

This job-centered approach leads to solutions with higher customer value and adoption.

How does Job Step Mapping differ from other approaches?

Versus Process Mapping

Process mapping typically documents how work currently flows through an organization or system. Job Step Mapping focuses on customer goals independent of current processes or solutions, revealing opportunities that process maps might miss.

Versus Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping often focuses on touch-points with specific products or services and emphasizes emotional responses. Job Step Mapping captures the functional job structure independent of any specific solution and creates a more stable foundation for innovation.

Versus Use Case Modeling

Use cases describe how users interact with specific systems to accomplish tasks. Job Step Mapping is solution-agnostic, capturing customer goals regardless of what systems they currently use, and reveals opportunities beyond current product boundaries.

Versus Task Analysis

Task analysis breaks down specific activities into detailed actions often for interface design. Job Step Mapping operates at a higher level of abstraction, focusing on the overall structure of customer goals rather than specific implementation details.

How thrv helps with Job Step Mapping

thrv provides specialized tools and methodologies to help companies develop comprehensive job step maps that drive innovation and growth.