# JTBD - Sift *Jobs in the format "When [situation], I want [motivation], so that [outcome]."* *No feature names. Only the person's progress.* *Every job cites the persona and the research data it grew from.* *Jobs with no data go into the Hypotheses section.* --- ## Main Job of the Product **When I am preparing for a roadmap planning session and I have customer feedback spread across multiple tools I haven't had time to read, I want to feel certain I know what our customers actually need most - with the evidence behind it - so that I can walk into the session with a call I'll stand behind and defend if anyone pushes back.** - **Persona:** A - The Overloaded PM (primary) - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment A primary JTBD and secondary JTBD). research.md (JTBD Selected jobs). CLAUDE.md (Primary Job). ux-patterns.md B1 (synthesis-first), B5 (retrospective synthesis). - **Note:** This is stated in the PM's language, not the product's. The product names this "synthesis-to-defensible-decision." The PM names it "I want to not be guessing when I walk into the room." --- ## Related Jobs (on the way to the main job) ### J1 - Stakeholder defense **When a colleague or executive challenges a roadmap decision I've already made, I want to pull up the actual customer evidence behind it right then, so that I can hold my position with facts rather than back down because I can't remember where I saw it.** - **Persona:** A - primary. B - secondary (higher stakes audience: board, not sales). - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment A secondary JTBD: "When a stakeholder challenges a roadmap decision, I want to quickly pull the underlying evidence so that I can defend the choice with real customer voices rather than my opinion."). ux-patterns.md B2 (evidence as a social object - "the PM uses insights to persuade stakeholders"). --- ### J2 - Make sense of the incoming pile **When I receive feedback from multiple sources over the past month, I want to see the coherent picture of what is happening without having to read everything myself, so that I can spot the real patterns and not just the loudest voices.** - **Persona:** A - primary. B - secondary (managing the team's incoming pile rather than their own). - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment A pain: "synthesis is scattered, manual, and unreliable"). ux-patterns.md B1 (synthesis-first - "they do not want to start with raw data"). ux-patterns.md B5 (retrospective synthesis over real-time monitoring). CLAUDE.md (Secondary Job 2: "when I receive feedback from multiple sources..."). --- ### J3 - Know how much to trust a conclusion **When I am looking at a summary of what customers want, I want to understand how strong the evidence actually is behind each conclusion, so that I can decide whether to act on it now or wait until I have more signal before putting it on the roadmap.** - **Persona:** A - primary. - **Research source:** benchmark.md (Mechanism 3: "honest confidence and sample size display"). benchmark.md (anti-pattern: "a synthesis can be confidently stated and wrong. When the PM discovers the error, trust is destroyed permanently."). ux-patterns.md B3 (trust through spot-checking - the PM calibrates trust by checking what they already know). --- ### J4 - Get the team to the same "why" **When I share a roadmap decision with engineering, design, or customer success, I want to give them the customer evidence behind it in a form they can read and respond to without needing access to my tools, so that we are aligned on why we are building this before we discuss how.** - **Persona:** A - secondary to this job. B - primary (the Product Lead coordinates across the PM team). - **Research source:** ux-patterns.md B2 (evidence as a social object: "the evidence brief travels through the organization independently of the PM"). strategy.md (Segment B pain: "no consistent evidence standard" across the PM team). aarrr.md (Retention: "collaboration drives retention more than solo use - once the team depends on Sift outputs, the individual PM cannot stop without disrupting the team"). --- ### J5 - Close the signal loop with the people who supply it **When I have processed customer feedback and made a decision about it, I want the people who submitted that feedback to see what it contributed to, so that they keep sending me signal rather than giving up because nothing visible ever happens to it.** - **Persona:** C - primary. A - secondary (PM benefits from CS/support continuing to submit signal). - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment C JTBD: "When I share customer feedback with the product team, I want to see whether it influenced a decision so that I can close the loop with the customer."). competitors.md (Canny addresses this externally through public roadmap and changelog for customer-facing use case). --- ## Emotional Jobs ### E1 - Feel like I actually understood it, not just processed it **When I finish reviewing customer feedback before a planning session, I want to feel I have genuinely understood what customers are saying and not just moved text around, so that I can walk into the meeting without the nagging suspicion that I missed something important.** - **Persona:** A - primary. - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment A motivation: "feel confident, not just defensible"). ux-patterns.md B3 (spot-checking as the trust mechanism - the PM needs to recognize real themes, not just scan output). [? The specific feeling of "nagging suspicion" is a hypothesis about the emotional texture; no primary source has confirmed this phrasing. Supported directionally by the "3-5 hours per planning cycle" pain in research.md but that figure is unvalidated.] --- ### E2 - Feel certain instead of defensive when questioned **When a stakeholder questions a decision I've made, I want to feel grounded and prepared rather than defensive or caught off guard, so that I project confidence and move the conversation forward rather than backing down or apologizing.** - **Persona:** A - primary. B - secondary (higher-visibility version of the same feeling: the board call). - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment A motivation: "feel confident, not just defensible"). CLAUDE.md ("emotion to design for: confidence and calm instead of overload"). research.md (Section 2: Objective 1 - "PMs trust and act on Sift's synthesis" - the behavioral outcome that makes E2 achievable). [? The "defensive vs. confident" emotional framing is a hypothesis; the research confirms the situation (stakeholder challenges a decision) but the exact emotional texture is not yet sourced from a primary PM voice.] --- ## Social Jobs ### S1 - Give stakeholders something they can engage with **When I share a roadmap decision with someone who was not involved in the research, I want to give them a traceable set of evidence they can question or push back on, so that the conversation is about what customers actually said rather than about whether to trust my judgment.** - **Persona:** A - primary. B - primary (higher stakes). - **Research source:** ux-patterns.md B2 (evidence as a social object: "the evidence brief is a social artifact that travels through the organization independently of the PM. Evidence needs to be shareable, readable without Sift context, and citation-complete for an audience that was not present in the analysis session."). aarrr.md (Referral: "the brief circulates in environments where the audience is receptive to PM tools"). --- ### S2 - Create a credible evidence standard the whole team uses **When my PM team each runs their own process for synthesizing feedback, I want to establish a shared approach that produces comparable, citable evidence across the team, so that when I present to leadership I am showing a systematic picture of customer needs rather than one PM's synthesis stitched together with another's.** - **Persona:** B - primary. A - secondary (benefits from being part of a consistent team standard). - **Research source:** strategy.md (Segment B pain: "every PM synthesizes feedback differently. No consistent evidence standard."). strategy.md (Segment B JTBD: "When I present the roadmap to leadership, I want to show systematic customer evidence behind each priority."). [? Whether Product Leads actively want a standardized evidence tool vs. individual PMs choosing their own tools is a hypothesis - no primary source confirms the exact shape of Segment B's adoption decision.] --- ## Hypotheses Section Jobs that are plausible but have no direct research data behind them. Do NOT use these in the matrix below until they are confirmed. **H-J1 - Continuous sensing between cycles** When I am not in a planning cycle, I want to stay loosely aware of whether customer problems are shifting, so that I am not surprised when I sit down for planning and find the picture has changed. - **Why it is a hypothesis:** ux-patterns.md B5 identifies retrospective synthesis as the primary pattern, but does not confirm that PMs want continuous awareness. aarrr.md Retention describes "new signal since last session" as the retention hook, but this is a product design choice, not a confirmed PM behavior. [? No source confirms PMs actively want monitoring between cycles vs. preferring to stay focused on the current sprint.] **H-J2 - Reproduce someone else's synthesis** When a colleague has already synthesized feedback from a period I was not involved in, I want to be able to see how they reached their conclusions, so that I can build on their work rather than start from scratch. - **Why it is a hypothesis:** No research source addresses team-level synthesis reuse. Implied by strategy.md Segment B pain (inconsistent standards) but not confirmed as a job a PM would actively seek to do. [? Needs primary research to confirm.] --- ## JTBD Matrix *Rows: main job and all related jobs. Columns: three personas. Importance 1 (low), 2 (medium), 3 (high). [?] where unknown.* *FUNCTION: what in the product closes this job. COMPETITORS: which named competitors partially or fully close it.* | Job | Persona A (PM) | Persona B (Product Lead) | Persona C (Signal Supplier) | FUNCTION | COMPETITORS | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | **Main: Confident defensible synthesis for planning** | **3** - Core job. strategy.md, ux-patterns.md B1, B5. | 2 - Needs the team to do this; consumes the output rather than producing it. strategy.md Segment B. | [?] Not their job. | AI synthesis view: theme clusters with evidence counts, recency, ranked by signal volume. | Productboard (Spark AI prompts - partial, trust mechanism unclear); Canny (vote-based, not synthesis); Enterpret (partial, enterprise-only); Dovetail (research not roadmap); JPD (scoring, not synthesis). **None close the transparent trust chain.** | | **J1: Stakeholder defense** | **3** - Explicit secondary JTBD. strategy.md. | **3** - Higher stakes (board, leadership). strategy.md Segment B JTBD. | 1 - Can defend customer signal to the PM but not a roadmap decision. | Shareable evidence document with traceable source links. Viewable without tool access. | Dovetail (insight docs with clips - research audience, not roadmap defense); Productboard (partial sharing); Canny (public roadmap - wrong audience, customer-facing). **No competitor closes PM-to-stakeholder defense specifically.** | | **J2: Make sense of the incoming pile** | **3** - Core synthesis job. strategy.md, ux-patterns.md B1, B5. | 2 - Manages at team level, not item level. | 2 - Wants to know signal was received and surfaced. | Feedback ingestion pipeline + AI theme clustering with source attribution. | Productboard (Spark capture + classification); Canny (Autopilot); Enterpret (adaptive taxonomy, 50+ integrations); Dovetail (channels). **All close capture and classification. None close trustworthy synthesis.** | | **J3: Know how much to trust a conclusion** | **3** - The trust calibration job. benchmark.md, ux-patterns.md B3. | 2 - Needs to project confidence, which requires knowing how confident to be. | [?] | Honest confidence display. Day-one scope (D2, strategy.md June 2026): item count per theme (n=X) and a "low signal" badge for thin evidence. Source diversity, time range, and configurable thresholds are v2 scope. | **None of the five competitors clearly close this from public pages.** This is the clearest unclosed gap. | | **J4: Get the team to the same "why"** | 2 - Uses the brief to align colleagues. ux-patterns.md B2. | **3** - Core pain: no consistent standard across PM team. strategy.md Segment B. | 1 - Peripheral: wants to see their signal acknowledged, not to align a team. | Shareable evidence document + Jira/Linear link connecting evidence to roadmap items. | Dovetail (shareable insight docs for research teams, not PM-to-team alignment); Canny (changelog - customer-facing, not internal). **Partially closed by Dovetail for wrong audience.** | | **J5: Close the signal loop** | 1 - The PM benefits from CS continuing to submit signal, but this is not the PM's job. | 1 - Peripheral. | **3** - Core job. strategy.md Segment C JTBD. | Signal supplier view: contribution tracker showing which themes a CS/support member's tickets contributed to. | Canny (public roadmap and changelog - external/customer-facing, not internal CS-to-PM). **Not closed for internal use by any competitor.** | | **E1: Feel like I actually understood it** | **3** - Emotional texture of the main job. strategy.md, ux-patterns.md B3. | 2 - Less about understanding personally, more about credibility with leadership. | [?] | All trust mechanisms working together: spot-checkable themes, honest confidence, drill-down to raw text. | Not explicitly designed for by any competitor. | | **E2: Feel certain instead of defensive when questioned** | **3** - The core emotional outcome. strategy.md, CLAUDE.md. | **3** - At higher visibility. | [?] | Full evidence chain: theme - evidence items - raw source. PM can answer "why is this the priority?" in one click. | Not explicitly designed for by any competitor. The synthesis outputs exist; the "walk into the room feeling ready" experience is not a stated design goal in any competitor's public UX. | | **S1: Give stakeholders something they can engage with** | **3** - ux-patterns.md B2. aarrr.md referral. | **3** - Board presentation use case. strategy.md. | [?] | Public shareable brief with inline citations. No login required to view. | Dovetail (shareable research docs); Canny (public-facing, different function). **Partially closed for research teams. Not closed for roadmap defense.** | | **S2: Create a shared evidence standard** | 2 - Benefits from team alignment. | **3** - Core pain and motivation. strategy.md Segment B. | [?] | Team workspace with consistent synthesis view, shared integrations, same confidence display for all PMs. | Productboard (team workspace, but synthesis method unclear). Enterpret (infrastructure play - consistent taxonomy). **Partially closed at team setup level; not closed at trust-and-evidence level.** | --- ## Matrix Conclusions ### 3 Jobs for the MVP Core These are the jobs that are importance 3 for Persona A (the primary persona) AND not closed by any existing competitor: 1. **Confident defensible synthesis for planning (Main Job)** - Importance 3 for Persona A. All competitors provide feedback capture and AI classification. None demonstrate, on public pages, a transparent synthesis chain the PM can act on and defend. The gap is at the trust layer, not at the data layer. 2. **Know how much to trust a conclusion (J3)** - Importance 3 for Persona A. The clearest unclosed gap across all five competitors. No competitor shows sample size, source diversity, and confidence level alongside synthesis conclusions with any honest variation (thin evidence vs. strong evidence treated differently). This is the single function most needed to make the main job achievable. 3. **Give stakeholders something they can engage with (S1)** - Importance 3 for both Persona A and B. Dovetail partially closes this for research teams, not PM roadmap defense. No competitor has a PM-focused shareable evidence brief designed for the "defend your roadmap to leadership" moment. This is both a product function and the primary referral artifact (aarrr.md). ### Candidate-for-Cut Functions These are functions that close no job with importance 3 for Persona A, or close jobs already well-served by competitors: - **Signal heard loop / contribution tracker (J5)** - Importance 3 for Segment C only. Confirmed cut from MVP by D1 (strategy.md Section 6, research.md Section 9, June 2026). Segment C is a PM retention dependency, not an independent MVP feature. The Segment A transparency design (theme - evidence - source chain) is the prerequisite surface for this function in the fast follow. - **Real-time monitoring / continuous sensing (H-J1 Hypothesis)** - Not confirmed as a real job. ux-patterns.md explicitly identifies retrospective synthesis as the primary behavior. Real-time dashboard is the anti-pattern per ux-patterns.md. - **Team synthesis reproduction (H-J2 Hypothesis)** - Unconfirmed job. No research source supports it as a stated need. --- ## Critique *Strict review of personas.md and jtbd.md. Every claim classified. Danger list follows.* --- ### Claim Review Table | Claim | Source | Status | |---|---|---| | Segment A PM age 28-38 | strategy.md (inferred from career progression) | HYPOTHESIS - career-progression inference, not survey data | | Segment A PM at B2B SaaS 50-500 employees | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - typical target profile, not census-validated | | PM spends 3-5 hours on manual synthesis per cycle | research.md Section 1 | HYPOTHESIS - explicitly flagged [?] in the source | | PMs live in Jira or Linear for execution | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - stated as profile attribute, no usage data cited | | Feedback sits in Intercom, Zendesk, Gong | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - likely stack for target segment, not surveyed | | Behavioral pattern B1 - synthesis-first, detail-on-demand | ux-patterns.md | HYPOTHESIS - behavioral inference, directionally supported by Productboard's design for "no translation layer, no export step, no 'now what?' moment" (productboard.com, June 2026) | | Behavioral pattern B2 - evidence as a social object | ux-patterns.md | HYPOTHESIS - confirmed directionally by "citations make it trustworthy enough to present to execs" (aipmtools.org, June 2026) but stakeholder use is confirmed, not the specific "brief travels independently" claim | | Behavioral pattern B3 - trust through spot-checking | ux-patterns.md | CONFIRMED (MEDIUM) - "sanity-checking outputs and using simple eval style checks (spot tests) before trusting an AI workflow in a critical process" named as core PM competency. Source: aipmtools.org (June 2026). See live-research.md F2. | | Behavioral pattern B4 - context-switching cost aversion | ux-patterns.md | HYPOTHESIS - plausible for multi-tool knowledge workers; no PM-specific data cited | | Behavioral pattern B5 - retrospective synthesis | ux-patterns.md | HYPOTHESIS - inferred from PM work cycles | | Trust mechanism: inline citation creates trust (Perplexity pattern) | benchmark.md | CONFIRMED for Perplexity's general-web-search users; HYPOTHESIS for skeptical PMs specifically | | Trust mechanism: decomposability (Amplitude pattern) | benchmark.md | CONFIRMED for BI/analytics users; HYPOTHESIS for PM-feedback-synthesis context | | Trust failure mode: confident output with hidden reasoning | benchmark.md | CONFIRMED by observation of Canny Autopilot and early Productboard AI UX; HYPOTHESIS that this is WHY PMs distrust them (observation, not stated PM reason) | | H1 - PMs trust AI synthesis enough to act without re-checking raw data | research.md, strategy.md | CONFIRMED (MEDIUM) with condition: when synthesis is transparent and traceable, PMs act without re-synthesizing raw data. Without transparency, H1 fails. Sources: aipmtools.org, blog.ravi-mehta.com, productboard.com (June 2026). See live-research.md F4. D2 (June 2026): confidence display is mandatory in MVP precisely because transparency is the condition H1 requires. | | Activation moment: confirmation of known intuition | aarrr.md | HYPOTHESIS - product design choice based on behavioral inference | | Retention: event-driven, not calendar-driven | aarrr.md | HYPOTHESIS - inferred from PM work patterns | | No competitor owns the PM-specific evidence story | competitors.md | CONFIRMED - based on live review of five competitor public pages | | PM-specific positioning gap is available | competitors.md | CONFIRMED - corroborated by absence of this positioning across all five competitors | | Segment B Product Lead age 35-45 | strategy.md (inferred) | HYPOTHESIS - career-progression inference | | Product Lead faces no consistent evidence standard | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - stated as segment pain, not researched with primary data | | Signal Supplier pain: feedback disappears with no closure | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - directionally supported by Canny's public roadmap product solving the same problem; not confirmed from CS/Support primary source | | PM mood quote (illustrative) | personas.md | ILLUSTRATIVE - not a sourced quote. Clearly labeled. | | Product Lead mood quote (illustrative) | personas.md | ILLUSTRATIVE - not a sourced quote. Clearly labeled. | | Signal Supplier mood quote (illustrative) | personas.md | ILLUSTRATIVE - not a sourced quote. Clearly labeled. | | E1 - emotional texture "nagging suspicion" | personas.md | HYPOTHESIS - directionally supported by the pain description in strategy.md but the specific emotional phrasing is not sourced | | E2 - "feel defensive when questioned" | personas.md | HYPOTHESIS - same basis | | S2 - Product Lead wants a shared evidence standard across PM team | strategy.md | HYPOTHESIS - stated as pain, not as an actively sought solution | --- ### Danger List Claims that DIRECTLY affect a design or product decision and are currently standing on [?] or on a hypothesis. In priority order. **1. H1 - PMs trust AI synthesis enough to act without re-checking raw data.** - What depends on it: the entire core product function. If false, no PM ever acts on the synthesis without auditing the raw data. Sift becomes a data aggregator, not a synthesis tool. The time-saving value proposition fails. Every downstream design decision (synthesis-first view, confidence display as a trust mechanism, evidence brief as a substitute for manual review) depends on H1 being at least conditionally true. - Where to look: Reddit (r/ProductManagement, r/prodmgmt) - search for PMs describing their experience with Productboard Spark, Canny Autopilot, and AI synthesis tools. G2/Capterra reviews of Productboard and Canny filtering for "AI" and "trust" language. PM forums (Lenny's Newsletter, Mind the Product community posts). Try to KILL it first: search for PMs who say they always re-check the raw data regardless of what the AI says. **2. Behavioral patterns B1-B5 are all hypotheses with no primary-source PM data.** - What depends on them: the entire UX pattern choice (synthesis-first report rather than inbox or dashboard), the activation design (show synthesis first, not raw data), the retention hook (event-driven re-engagement), the sharing design (evidence brief as primary output). - Where to look: Reddit posts where PMs describe their actual workflow during planning sessions. G2 reviews that describe HOW users use Productboard or Dovetail during planning (not just what they think of the product). The behavioral patterns are directionally strong but have no PM-voice confirmation. **3. "3-5 hours per planning cycle on manual synthesis" - the baseline time figure.** - What depends on it: the core time-saving value proposition. If the real number is 20 minutes, the efficiency case is weak. If it is 8 hours, the case is stronger than currently stated. Objective 2 (under 25 minutes per planning session) can only be validated if we know the baseline. - Where to look: Reddit (ask or find threads where PMs describe their pre-planning session workflow). PM surveys (if any published data exists on PM time allocation). User interviews are the highest-fidelity source but are not web-researchable. --- ### 3 Targeted Questions to Close the Most Important Gaps **Q1 - The trust question (attacks H1):** Do PMs who have used AI feedback synthesis tools (Productboard Spark, Canny Autopilot, Dovetail AI summaries) act on the synthesis output directly, or do they verify against the raw data before putting something on the roadmap? What specifically makes them trust or distrust the AI output? Target sources: Reddit (r/ProductManagement), G2 reviews for Productboard and Canny, PM community Slack threads. Approach: search for negative reviews and posts about AI synthesis first. **Q2 - The baseline pain question:** How long do PMs actually spend on manual feedback synthesis before a planning session today, and what does that process look like step by step? Target sources: Reddit threads about PM planning workflows, PM community discussions, Lenny's Newsletter reader questions (where PMs describe process in their own words). User interviews if web research yields nothing specific. **Q3 - The social job question:** Do PMs share their synthesis outputs with stakeholders before or after the planning decision? Is the evidence brief primarily defensive (used after the decision is challenged) or persuasive (used before to build alignment)? Target sources: Reddit posts about stakeholder management, PM community discussions about "defending the roadmap," G2/Capterra reviews that describe the sharing use case. Productboard and Dovetail reviews mentioning sharing or evidence communication.