Job Stories vs User Stories: What's the Difference?

Let's talk about job stories vs user stories? What's the difference and when do you use one over the other? Learn more about what job stories are, the job story template, and when to use each (and when to use both) in this video.

*****************
References:
Intercom, Clayton Christensen, Alan Klement, & Jobs to Be Done:

**********************
Inside this video
00:00 Introduction
00:20 What are Job Stories and Jobs to Be Done?
01:30 The 3-part Job Story Template Explained
03:00 Job Story vs User Story Example 1
04:17 Job Story vs User Story Example 2
05:13 When to Use Job Stories
06:28 Merging Job Stories & User Stories
07:10 Mix Story Types in Product Backlog

[georgwagner]

Almost 9 mins of such great content - w/o ads. I loved it :) As a developer I prefer the Gherkin-Syntax for user stories. But job stories are a nice thingy. Thanks.

[LegendaryMediaTV]

This video and your story mapping video are the reason I purchased your “Better User Stories” course. Clear, well organized, packed with info, and definitely speaking from experience. The course is the same way and well worth the price!

[radreba]

This is interesting. It is the use of Gherkins User Acceptances added to the User Story.

[olivierclop]

Hello Mike,
Very interesting for sure. I'm going to check my PBIs to spot JS hidden behind US.
It seems to me that JS can also be used as acceptance criteria because they can describe business ergonomic rules.
However, I think that if too much emphazise is put on JS, we may forget about end users and little by little forget about the agile approach that requires frequent user feedback to adjust the devlopement plan so that we build the right product. I agree with you, each team has to find the right balance that fits its product.
So we have to experiment and find the appropriate distribution, a bit like we already do with US, Enablers and Bugs. May be delivering a batch made of a US and its related JS to minimize the amount of work while, all in all, maximizing the actual delivered value...

[HelenG-sd]

Thanks Mike - this was super useful following our previous conversation last month. Our backlog now contains both types. Keep up the great work. ☺

[michaelwagener]

Thanks, Mike - as a scrum master, I want to write job stories, so that I can be more accurate in describing the needs of my users... 😂 Job stories have not hit my radar yet, but I am glad that they have now. I can see just how useful they could be. 👍🙂

[chriselliott]

I wrestled with this for a long time... There is a dogmatic approach to the use of user stories in some organisations and the job story offers an easy step for such organisations to be more pragmatic

[solomani-]

First I’ve heard of this approach. Sounds useful.

[BenjaminScherrey]

Haven't heard of job stories before. Certainly have fought against using generic "user" as the primary stakeholder. Now I see this is a different context and job stories might be superior in those cases.

[clairefreshney]

Isn't "see a warning message" > Output focused? When JTBD is outcome focused? So rather than stating the output, we should state the outcome in job stories?

[gauravshukla]

Seems that the job story contents can be easily a part of the Acceptance criteria of an User Story.Any thoughts?

[JohnSmith-fzih]

Thank you for your content.

I really struggled to get on board with this video. The first reason is the examples are poor. Not being able to Accidently place an order twice should not be its own user story. There shouldn’t even be “not” in a user story. In this case, this should be in the acceptance criteria on the user story for placing an order. Having so much implementation details determined by the user story instead of just outlining the goal and allowing the team to come up with a solution is also a major issue. A product owner should not be specifying implementation details like “show a message”. In this case, if the feature is implemented properly in the first place you wouldn’t need a kludge like a message telling the user not to do something that the UI allows. That’s just all-round broken.

As to the need for job stories, I was listening and wondering why I haven’t run into the problem that job stories provide. And it’s because I use the Gherkin syntax. In this, you list the pre-conditions. One can be that a certain type of user is logged in and taking a certain action. Which means I don’t ever have the problem job stories are solving.

Put more directly: this video explains that sometimes you don’t want to list the user (ie. it should be an optional field). And “when” should also be an optional field. Well Gherkin user stories give me both of these options out of the gate, I don’t need to mix and match user stories and job stories.

[devinhedge]

Nice to see a 10 year old idea finally getting sunshine and traction.

[hemantkothiyal]

I have a question Mike- how does job stories different than user story acceptance criteria (especially if I write them using Given When Then). I can elaborate user stories exactly like job stories by using acceptance criteria

[rajeswarikv]

This is a new learning..Thanks Mike for sharing

[TiffannyDoll]

Job stories look like acceptance criteria.