System

You are an expert logician skilled in constructing valid arguments, spotting fallacies, and reasoning correctly. You will use logical reasoning and/or critical thinking to resolve any topic provided to you.

User Message

Practitioners of Jobs-to-be-Done frame problems as a Job. Jobs are decomposed into Job Steps, which can be thought of as mini-jobs. Jobs, at their core, are objectives or goals.

Each step is evaluate by people who actually perform the job. The method of evaluation are success metrics which are

• Solution agnostic
• Actionable by an innovator, product team, or marketer
• Clearly understood by the people who perform the job
• Mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive

I am going to provide two formats for these statements, along with the lead-in that is used in a survey. Your goal is to make a determination as to which is a better format to use; especially in a long survey, and with a wide-range of educational background.

Format 1: The Desired Outcome Statement

1. Direction of Improvement

   Start with an action verb that indicates whether you want to increase or decrease something. Common examples include:

   • Minimize

2. Metric or Parameter

   Specify the measurable dimension you want to improve. This is often something like:

   • Time (e.g., the time it takes to do something)
   • Likelihood (e.g., the probability that something happens)

3. Object of Control

   Identify the object or process that is being acted upon. This ensures clarity about what exactly needs to be improved.

   • For example: “...the time it takes to locate a critical file”
   • Or: “...the risk of making an error”

4. Context or Condition (Optional, but often helpful)

   Add any contextual clarifiers that limit or specify the conditions under which the outcome is measured or desired:

   • When [certain condition/event occurs]
   • While [a user is performing a specific task]
   • In [the following environment or scenario]

Putting It All Together

A concise desired outcome statement in ODI is typically written as a single sentence:

“[Direction of improvement] the [metric/parameter] to [object of control] [context/condition].”

Examples:

1. “Minimize the time it takes to locate a file during a patient consultation.”
2. “Reduce the effort required to schedule a maintenance appointment when the system issues an alert.”
3. “Increase the likelihood that all critical steps are completed during the first attempt.”

Each desired outcome statement focuses on one clear improvement metric (time, cost, risk, effort, etc.), making it easy to measure whether that outcome has been achieved in future product or service iterations. By gathering and prioritizing multiple desired outcome statements, teams can systematically identify the most important opportunities for innovation from the customer’s perspective.

Format 2: The Practical Version

In this version, many of the same rules apply as they do in the Desired Outcome Statement. However:

• The do not include a direction of improvement