Jim Kalbach’s The Jobs to Be Done Playbook is a good starting point from a practical perspective, and for a high-level view, read Christensen’s Competing Against Luck. For the full academic treatment, see Acting with Technology by Bonnie Nardi and Victor Kaptelinin. If you are looking to do deeper reading, I would suggest reading Badass first then

You will likely encounter other situations where you want to interview people. To that end, remember the overall framework for interviews: What they’re trying to do overall The steps they take to do that What they’ve already tried Where they spend time and money throughout the entire process How often they experience the problem How long it takes t

In the Jobs to Be Done world, this is known as the “Four Forces.” It is a way of diagramming the external forces that push someone towards a new solution, internal forces that pull them towards it, as well as the anxieties and inertia that cause them to stay put. See Alan Klement’s When Coffee and Kale Compete for more.

A good partner for this is someone you’re loosely connected to or a stranger. Think: someone you tweet with occasionally but don’t know in real life, a coworker in a different department, a friend’s roommate, or your partner’s friend. Someone you know vaguely and not too closely. A close friend or family member is not a good candidate, as you proba

Paul Jarvis’ Company of One is one of the most influential books in the world of small software companies. Rob Walling’s Start Small, Stay Small and Arvid Kahl’s Zero to Sold are also part of that canon.

See Marty Cagan’s Inspired for more on viable, valuable, usable, and feasible.

In the words of product designer Adam Amran, “validating” an idea “smells of confirmation bias…[but] ‘evaluating’ would prime us to be more open to new insights instead of looking to ‘validate’ what we've assumed.”1

Step 5: Analyze your interviews.

A customer who cancels can be a sign that something was wrong in the marketing that attracted someone with a use case that wasn’t a fit for the product. Instead of trying to win them back, the goal of this interview is to figure out what their use case was and how they came to the product so you can stop attracting people with use cases that aren’t