{"site":{"name":"Koji","description":"AI-native customer research platform that helps teams conduct, analyze, and synthesize customer interviews at scale.","url":"https://www.koji.so","contentTypes":["blog","documentation"],"lastUpdated":"2026-10-11T09:52:28.996Z"},"content":[{"type":"documentation","id":"dfa33770-a1a4-4388-a0ff-95f6b23a5c47","slug":"universal-job-map","title":"The Universal Job Map: How to Map a Customer Job Step by Step","url":"https://www.koji.so/docs/universal-job-map","summary":"A job map breaks the job a customer is trying to get done into the steps they go through, independent of any product. Bettencourt and Ulwick introduced it in Harvard Business Review in 2008, and Ulwick's universal job map has eight steps: define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify and conclude. Teams build it from 10 to 20 interviews with people who do the job, walking through a real recent occasion step by step, then mark the steps with the most time, effort and errors as opportunities. Ulwick puts the number of desired outcomes in a typical job at 50 to 150.","content":"# The Universal Job Map: How to Map a Customer Job Step by Step\n\n**The short answer:** a job map breaks the job a customer is trying to get done into the steps they go through to get it done, from planning it to wrapping it up. Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick introduced it in Harvard Business Review in 2008, and Ulwick's version has eight steps that fit almost any job: **define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify and conclude**. You build one from interviews with the people who do the job, and you use it to find the steps where they struggle most. Those steps are where new products, features and services earn their place.\n\nThe map describes the job, not your product. That is the whole point of it, and the reason it keeps finding opportunities that feature-led research misses.\n\n## What a job map is (and what it is not)\n\nIn Jobs to Be Done thinking, people \"hire\" products to get a job done. A surgeon hires a scalpel to cut soft tissue. A finance lead hires a spreadsheet to close the month. The job is stable over time; the products hired to do it come and go.\n\nA job map takes that job and lays out, in order, what the person is trying to accomplish at each stage. Bettencourt and Ulwick were explicit that this is different from process mapping. A process map records what people do today, including all the workarounds. A job map records what they are trying to get done at each step, whatever tools they happen to use. \"Open the CSV in Excel and fix the date columns\" is an activity. \"Get the data into a usable format\" is a job step. The first describes today's solution; the second will still be true when that solution is gone.\n\nUlwick sums up why a single template works across industries: \"Analysis of hundreds of jobs has revealed that all jobs consist of some or all of just eight fundamental process steps.\" Not every job uses all eight, and some steps repeat, but the template gives you a checklist that stops you skipping the unglamorous parts of a job, which is often where the unmet needs are.\n\n## The eight steps of the universal job map\n\nThe eight steps are Ulwick's. The descriptions and examples below are ours, using one running example: a product manager whose job is to *decide which feature to build next*.\n\n1. **Define.** Work out the goal and plan the approach. *Example: decide what \"next\" means this quarter and which goals the choice must serve.*\n2. **Locate.** Gather the inputs the job needs, whether those are items, data or information. *Example: pull usage data, sales requests and recent interview notes.*\n3. **Prepare.** Set up the inputs and the environment. *Example: tidy the request list, merge duplicates and group by customer segment.*\n4. **Confirm.** Check everything is ready before committing. *Example: check the data is current and the key stakeholders agree on the goal.*\n5. **Execute.** Carry out the core of the job. *Example: score and compare the options and make the call.*\n6. **Monitor.** Check whether the job is going to plan. *Example: watch early adoption and feedback after the decision.*\n7. **Modify.** Adjust when it is not. *Example: re-scope, or swap in the runner-up if the signal is poor.*\n8. **Conclude.** Finish the job, or get ready to do it again. *Example: write up the decision and archive the evidence for next quarter.*\n\n![Framework showing the eight steps of the universal job map: define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify and conclude.](/visuals/universal-job-map-eight-steps-framework/universal-job-map-eight-steps-framework.png \"Use the eight steps as a checklist so no part of the job goes unexamined · Source: Lance Bettencourt and Anthony Ulwick, Harvard Business Review (2008)\")\n\nMost teams instinctively research the execute step, because that is where their product sits. The other seven are where the surprises are. In the example, a prioritisation tool helps with execute, but the product manager may lose most of their week in locate and prepare, chasing data across five systems. That is a different product opportunity, and you would never see it if you only asked about scoring.\n\n## Why job mapping finds opportunities other methods miss\n\nThree things make job maps unusually productive.\n\n**They are stable.** A job map written around the job, not the tools, stays valid as technology changes. Teams can reuse the same map for years and track which steps the market has served well and which it still ignores.\n\n**They are complete.** Because the template forces you through all eight steps, it surfaces needs nobody mentions unprompted. People rarely complain about the confirm step, for example, until you ask them how they know they are ready, and then the stories of failed launches come out.\n\n**They feed measurement.** Each step becomes the frame for *desired outcome statements*: the measures people use to judge whether a step went well, written as a direction, a metric and a context, such as \"minimise the time it takes to find the latest usage data\". In *What Customers Want* (2005), Ulwick puts the number of these measures at 50 to 150 for a typical job, and says a single one-hour interview captures roughly 20 to 30 of them. Strategyn, Ulwick's consultancy, reports finding 75 desired outcomes for the job of cutting a straight line with a circular saw. Those figures explain why job mapping needs a series of interviews rather than one workshop: no single person holds the whole map.\n\nThe best-known result comes from Ulwick's own firm, so read it as a practitioner's account rather than an independent study. Strategyn reports that Cordis, the medical device company, used this approach in the 1990s to grow its share of the angioplasty balloon market from about 1% to more than 20%, launching 19 products in under 18 months.\n\n## How to build a job map, step by step\n\n### 1. Define the job and the job executor\n\nWrite the job as a verb, an object and, if needed, a context: \"decide which feature to build next\", \"get a patient's blood pressure under control\", \"pay a supplier invoice on time\". Keep it free of any product. Then name the *job executor*, the person who actually does the job. Mapping the buyer's job when the user is someone else is the most common way a map goes wrong.\n\nPitch the job at the right level. \"Run a business\" is too broad to map; \"export a report\" is too narrow and is usually one step of a bigger job. A useful test: could several different kinds of product compete to do this job? If yes, the level is about right.\n\n### 2. Recruit people who do the job, not just your customers\n\nYou want job executors, including people who use a competitor, a spreadsheet or nothing at all. Customers alone give you a map biased towards the steps your product already covers. Ten to twenty interviews across distinct segments is a sensible first round for the qualitative map; you stop when new interviews stop adding new steps.\n\n### 3. Running job mapping interviews\n\nA job mapping interview is a walk through the last time the person did the job. Anchor it in a real, recent occasion, then move through it in order.\n\n![A researcher taking notes while a participant talks through the last time they did a job, step by step](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1605256585681-455837661b18?crop=entropy&cs=tinysrgb&fit=max&fm=jpg&ixid=M3w5NDUzMDN8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHwxfHx0d28lMjBwZW9wbGUlMjBpbnRlcnZpZXclMjBub3RlYm9vayUyMHRhYmxlfGVufDF8MHx8fDE3OTE2OTc4MTB8MA&ixlib=rb-4.1.0&q=80&w=1080)\n\n_Photo by [Luke Southern](https://unsplash.com/@lukesouthern?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral) on [Unsplash](https://unsplash.com/?utm_source=koji&utm_medium=referral)_\n\nGood prompts for each step:\n\n- *Define:* \"When you started, what were you trying to achieve? How did you decide on the approach?\"\n- *Locate:* \"What did you need to have in hand before you could start? Where did it come from?\"\n- *Prepare:* \"What did you have to set up or organise first?\"\n- *Confirm:* \"How did you know you were ready to go ahead?\"\n- *Execute:* \"Walk me through the main part. What was hardest?\"\n- *Monitor:* \"How could you tell whether it was working?\"\n- *Modify:* \"When something went off track, what did you change?\"\n- *Conclude:* \"How did you know you were done? What happened afterwards?\"\n\nAt every step, probe for time, effort, errors and variability: \"How long did that take?\", \"How often does that go wrong?\", \"What happens when it does?\" These answers become your desired outcome statements later. Resist any question about features or solutions; you are mapping the job, not testing ideas.\n\n### 4. Synthesise the map\n\nAfter each interview, write what the person was trying to get done as candidate steps in verb-object form (\"locate the latest usage data\", not \"uses the BI dashboard\"). Across interviews, merge duplicates, place each step under one of the eight stages, and check the sequence with a few participants. A finished map usually has a dozen or more steps across the eight stages.\n\n### 5. Find where the job breaks down\n\nMark the steps where people report the most time, effort, errors or workarounds. That gives you a qualitative view of where to look. If you need to rank opportunities with confidence, write desired outcome statements for each step and run a survey that rates each one for importance and current satisfaction, which is the quantitative half of Outcome-Driven Innovation.\n\n## Job map vs customer journey map\n\nThe two are easy to confuse, and both are useful. A customer journey map follows a person's experience with a company or product: discovering it, buying it, getting support. A job map follows the job, whatever products are involved. The journey map shows how well you serve the customer today; the job map shows what they are trying to get done, including the parts no one serves yet.\n\n![Comparison of a job map and a customer journey map, showing how their focus, steps, stability and main use differ.](/visuals/job-map-vs-customer-journey-map-comparison/job-map-vs-customer-journey-map-comparison.png \"Use the journey map to fix today's experience and the job map to find what to build next\")\n\nA practical rule: use a journey map when the question is \"where are we losing people?\", and a job map when it is \"what should we build that no one has built yet?\"\n\n## Common mistakes\n\n- **Mapping your product's workflow.** If your product's screens appear in the map, you have a process map. Rewrite each step as what the person is trying to accomplish.\n- **Mapping only execute.** If most of your steps sit in one stage, go back and ask about planning, getting inputs, checking readiness and finishing.\n- **Mixing jobs.** \"Choose a supplier\" and \"pay a supplier\" are different jobs with different executors. Map them separately.\n- **Too few or too similar interviews.** A map built from five power users of your own product will miss the steps that drive people to give up.\n- **Jumping to solutions.** The map should come before any feature ideas. Teams that start with a solution tend to find the steps that justify it.\n\n## How Koji helps\n\nKoji runs AI-moderated interviews by voice or text, which suits job mapping well: the interview is a long, structured walk through a real occasion, and it has to be run the same way many times.\n\n- **Start from a Jobs to Be Done template.** Koji's template library includes a Jobs to Be Done study, and the research brief can carry the JTBD method itself: its principles, question patterns and the points where the interviewer should dig deeper, such as the moment the person decided to act.\n- **Script the eight steps as questions.** Add one open-ended question per stage of the map and set the follow-up depth on each, from no follow-ups to three, with your own probing instructions (\"ask how long this took and how often it goes wrong\"). Every participant gets the same walk through the job, which is hard to keep up across twenty human-moderated sessions.\n- **Add structured questions where you need numbers.** Scale and choice questions sit inside the same conversation, so you can ask people to rate how hard each step was alongside the open discussion. See the [structured questions guide](/docs/structured-questions-guide).\n- **Recruit job executors, not just customers.** Screening questions turn away people who do not do the job, and panel recruitment can reach people outside your customer base.\n- **Read the map out of the report.** The report groups themes and pain points across interviews, and every finding links to the participants and quotes behind it, so you can see which steps people struggle with most and check the evidence yourself.\n\n![Koji template library with filters by role and cards for Jobs to Be Done, churn and concept testing interviews](/email/shots/shot-templates.jpg \"The Jobs to Be Done template is a ready starting point for a job mapping study\")\n\nCompared with running each session yourself, the main change is consistency and reach: every interview follows the same map, in the participant's own time and language, and the synthesis starts as soon as the first interviews come in. You still own the map. Koji gives you the raw material faster and keeps the evidence attached.\n\n## Related Resources\n\n- [Jobs to Be Done framework](/docs/jobs-to-be-done-framework)\n- [Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI)](/docs/outcome-driven-innovation-odi)\n- [Switch interviews: the JTBD interview method](/docs/switch-interviews-jtbd-method)\n- [Customer journey mapping](/docs/customer-journey-mapping)\n- [Opportunity solution tree](/docs/opportunity-solution-tree)\n- [Structured questions guide](/docs/structured-questions-guide)\n\n## Sources\n\n- Lance A. Bettencourt and Anthony W. Ulwick, \"The Customer-Centered Innovation Map\", *Harvard Business Review*, May 2008.\n- Anthony W. Ulwick, *What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services*, McGraw-Hill, 2005.\n- Strategyn, \"Jobs to Be Done template\" and Cordis case study, strategyn.com.\n","category":"frameworks","lastModified":"2026-10-11T05:50:10.836027+00:00","metaTitle":"Universal Job Map: The 8 Steps of JTBD Job Mapping | Koji","metaDescription":"Learn the eight steps of the universal job map (define to conclude), how to run job mapping interviews and how to find the steps where customers struggle.","keywords":["job map","universal job map","jobs to be done job map","job mapping","ulwick job map","customer job map","job map template"],"aiSummary":"A job map breaks the job a customer is trying to get done into the steps they go through, independent of any product. Bettencourt and Ulwick introduced it in Harvard Business Review in 2008, and Ulwick's universal job map has eight steps: define, locate, prepare, confirm, execute, monitor, modify and conclude. Teams build it from 10 to 20 interviews with people who do the job, walking through a real recent occasion step by step, then mark the steps with the most time, effort and errors as opportunities. Ulwick puts the number of desired outcomes in a typical job at 50 to 150.","aiPrerequisites":["Basic familiarity with Jobs to Be Done","Experience running or reading customer interviews"],"aiLearningOutcomes":["Name the eight steps of the universal job map and what happens in each","Define a job and its job executor at the right level","Run a job mapping interview that walks through a real, recent occasion","Turn interview notes into job steps and desired outcome statements","Tell a job map apart from a customer journey map and a process map"],"aiDifficulty":"intermediate","aiEstimatedTime":"11 min read"}],"pagination":{"total":1,"returned":1,"offset":0}}