Better stories with “Job Story” 😎
Buckle up for a game-changing experience in defining features and functionalities in Product management and UX.
Call it as “Job Stories”. Invented accidentally by Intercom team with Alan Klement.
“Job stories enables you to address the real people, not Personas.” interesting? Let’s roll!
Why not User story?
User story are developed based on Personas which are imaginary and defined with assumptions. Moreover fails to address the user’s causality.
The interesting part of the 🍰 is motivation of user’s action is lost. Implementing with assumptions and attributes is locked up with empty contexts and fails to ask the “WHY”. When you don’t ask the “WHY” you fail to solve a real problem of a real user.🙄
Make way for “JOB STORIES” 👑
Job stories evolves from real people, not from the personas. The situation of a user triggers the motivation, which leads to the expected outcome. It talks with the real people’s context and casualty. Job stories triggers the “WHY” which helps the product team to look at the casualty of a user without any assumptions. It helps to look at the exact motivation of a user, not implementation.
A typical job story will look like:
“When a new product is launched, I want to get notified So I can decide whether to pre-book or Just add to list.”
“When I don’t want to upload and I want to paste a picture in comment So I can complete quickly.”
Now compare the User story and Job stories. Let the battle begin.💪
User story: As a user I want to book an appointment with a Doctor so that I can manage my time better.🤧
Job stories: When I want to book an appointment with a Doctor I want to schedule and sync the same in my calendar so I can manage my time better.😌
User story: As a user I want to eat something while I’m in a meeting so I can be active.🙄
Job stories: When I’m in a meeting and when I feel starving I want to schedule an order, So, I can eat at time, be active in meeting.😎
The biggest question is “Why not deal with real people instead of Personas?” It enables to enhance the motivation part of a user not Implementation. Once the motivation part is set, it reveals the creative side of asking “WHY” instead of “What” and “How”. 👌
Designing for motivations and outcomes is far better than designing for attributes. This is the key difference between Personas and Job stories. Personas look at roles and attributes, Job Stories looks at situations and motivations. Personas explain who people are and what people do. But they never fully explain why people do something. Why people do things is far more important.
Big thanks to: Alan Klement for his insights on Job stories.👏
Reference:
Replacing The User Story With The Job Story — Jobs to be Done
How we accidentally invented Job Stories — Inside Intercom
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