Memorizing the job responsibilities of the product manager is an important step for successfully entering the position of product manager.
1.2.1 Three product views
Before expounding on the classification of product responsibilities, we need to explain the concept of "product view" first. Obviously, the personal "product view" is more decisive than the functional definition given by the company or team.
The following three questions can be used to define the "product view":
1) What do you think the product manager should do?
2) Which characteristics of the product manager position attract you most?
3) If one day you encounter all kinds of hardships and are forced to do a lot of things you don't want, what characteristics of the product manager position will support you to persevere?
Only by clarifying your product view can you lock in your goals and move forward firmly in your subsequent career.
Of course, a personal and complete product view should be formed continuously as one grows. The question written here now does not require everyone to understand immediately, but hope that one day, when you encounter related problems, you can go back and turn over this section, re-examine your product view, and see if you can Whether to find some different ideas.
After comprehensive analysis, product views can be divided into the following three types.
Type 1: Craftsman, or creator. The artisan product view emphasizes experience and probably originated in the PC software era. The “post-90s” may have no idea about the old software more than ten years ago, but the backbone of the experience of Internet products must still have a fresh memory of those bad product designs. In the early days of the development of the Internet, the benefits brought by the artisan product methodology were huge: the carefully crafted and polished products can open a significant gap from various crude products. Moreover, with the continuous improvement of working methods, once personal product thinking is formed, it will always widen the gap with competitors and form certain barriers to competition.
Type 2: Leader, that is, leader. Leadership product view emphasizes driving force. Many of these products have relatively average professional capabilities. The design is not as good as professional UI (visual designer), the technology is not as good as professional RD (development engineer), the test is not as good as professional QA (test engineer), and the analysis is not as good as professional BA (business analyst). But it is to be able to rely on the individual's strong execution and driving force to choose a general direction and continue to do it until success is achieved. If it took 9 months for the craftsman product person to increase the success rate of a product from 30% to 90% (because of the optimized experience), then the leader product person took 9 months to increase the success rate of 30% The product is divided into three plans for three times (strong multi-directional execution), and theoretically, the expected value of the two is the same.
Type 3: Boss, or operator. Boss product views are not limited to details, but pay attention to profit and viability. In other words, whether it is the method of the craftsman or the method of the leader, as long as it can survive and eventually gain benefits, the boss does not mind. To a certain extent, the bosses and craftsmen and leaders are a bit of a relationship. It can even be considered that a craftsman who leaves the front line as he grows older, or a leader who masters various skills, will eventually gradually become an operator.
At this point, the three product views have been explained, and we have entered the topic.
1.2.2 The general responsibilities of
product managers As the backbone of Internet projects, product managers connect all members of the team (development, design, operation, testing, marketing, etc.), and lead everyone forward with reasonable product planning and clear product vision. Meet the needs of users to create their own business interests.
Under normal circumstances, PM needs to be responsible for the entire product, and its main responsibilities include: product planning, product design and product execution.
1. Product planning The
so-called product planning is to answer a question through various means: what product are we going to make? Specifically, who is the target user of this product? What problem do you solve for them? What are the core and secondary needs of target users?
In order to answer this question, you need to do extensive market research, clarify market pain points, estimate market size, and find a perfect balance between "market needs" and "you can do it yourself." You need to do a lot of user research. In your product direction, what are the core pain points of current users? What are the size needs of users? What is the relationship between these requirements? You need to do in-depth competitive product analysis. What are the differences in functional positioning of different products? Even for the same sub-requirement, what are the differences between solutions for different products? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
In this process, you will go through a complete requirements management process, from the initial requirement collection, to the intermediate requirement analysis, to the final requirement screening and clarification, and finally to get a clear, complete and prioritized requirement list. As the basis for subsequent product design.
2. Product design The
purpose of product design is to give a clear and specific product design plan. Specifically, what are the functions of the product? How is each function realized step by step? What do the various pages of the product look like?
In order to solve this problem, you need to design the function of the product, clarify the information architecture and navigation method of the product, design an accurate and complete product prototype, and then optimize the professional work and experience of the interaction designer and visual designer. The design plan for the entire product is completely finalized.
3. Product execution The
so-called product execution refers to the transformation of product design drafts into real products that serve thousands of users through efficient teamwork.
As the backbone of the Internet team, product managers need to make full use of the professional skills of team members to make the entire project land. In this process, you need to work together with interaction designers and visual designers to complete high-quality product prototypes and related documents; you need to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of engineers to ensure that products are on time through reasonable project scheduling and project management Go online; you need to communicate in depth with marketing personnel to obtain the most target user groups at the lowest cost; you also need to work together with operations personnel to operate the product well, and ensure the high quality of the content while making the content full.
The above are very standard product manager job responsibilities. However, the reality is: On the one hand, the entire Internet industry is still relatively young, and the accumulation of product manager positions is even more limited. A unified and clear job responsibilities and behavior standards have not yet been formed, and there are large differences between different companies; on the other hand, On the one hand, with the differences in business types, job types, working years, etc., product manager job responsibilities will also appear more realistic differences. Below, we mainly talk about it specifically through the two dimensions of job classification and company classification.
1.2.2 The general responsibilities of
product managers As the backbone of Internet projects, product managers connect all members of the team (development, design, operation, testing, marketing, etc.), and lead everyone forward with reasonable product planning and clear product vision. Meet the needs of users to create their own business interests. Under normal circumstances, PM needs to be responsible for the entire product, and its main responsibilities include: product planning, product design and product execution.
1. Product planning The
so-called product planning is to answer a question through various means: what product are we going to make? Specifically, who is the target user of this product? What problem do you solve for them? What are the core and secondary needs of target users? In order to answer this question, you need to do extensive market research, clarify market pain points, estimate market size, and find a perfect balance between "market needs" and "you can do it yourself." You need to do a lot of user research. In your product direction, what are the core pain points of current users? What are the size needs of users? What is the relationship between these requirements? You need to do in-depth competitive product analysis. What are the differences in functional positioning of different products? Even for the same sub-requirement, what are the differences between solutions for different products? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? In this process, you will go through a complete requirements management process, from the initial requirement collection, to the intermediate requirement analysis, to the final requirement screening and clarification, and finally to get a clear, complete and prioritized requirement list. As the basis for subsequent product design.
2. Product design Product design, the purpose is to give a clear and specific product design plan.
Specifically, what are the functions of the product? How is each function realized step by step? What do the various pages of the product look like? In order to solve this problem, you need to design the function of the product, clarify the information architecture and navigation method of the product, design an accurate and complete product prototype, and then optimize the professional work and experience of the interaction designer and visual designer. The design plan for the entire product is completely finalized.
3. Product execution The
so-called product execution refers to the transformation of product design drafts into real products that serve thousands of users through efficient teamwork. As the backbone of the Internet team, product managers need to make full use of the professional skills of team members to make the entire project land.
In this process, you need to work together with interaction designers and visual designers to complete high-quality product prototypes and related documents; you need to fully mobilize the enthusiasm of engineers to ensure that products are on time through reasonable project scheduling and project management Go online; you need to communicate in depth with marketing personnel to obtain the most target user groups at the lowest cost; you also need to work together with operations personnel to operate the product well, and ensure the high quality of the content while making the content full.
The above are very standard product manager job responsibilities. However, the reality is: On the one hand, the entire Internet industry is still relatively young, and the accumulation of product manager positions is even more limited. A unified and clear job responsibilities and behavior standards have not yet been formed, and there are large differences between different companies; on the other hand, On the one hand, with the differences in business types, job types, working years, etc., product manager job responsibilities will also appear more realistic differences. Below, we mainly talk about it specifically through the two dimensions of job classification and company classification.
1.2.4 Responsibilities of product managers in different companies
From a trend point of view, with the large-scale flow of various professionals across the industry, the product methodologies of different companies are gradually converging.
However, because of the differences in the company's background, stages, and product lines, various company forms and corporate cultures are still derived, which are similar to each other but have their own characteristics. In specific career decisions, treatment and business lines are of course the key to weigh, but company culture also has an important influence that cannot be ignored, because it directly determines the position and display space of the product manager position in the company.
Based on my personal experience and communication with peers, most Internet companies can basically be divided into four types: extensive type, laboratory type, parent type and giant type.
Type 1: Extensive company.
Compared with giants such as BAT, small and extensive companies (two or three people can set up a small core team) generally do not have a fine division of functions. What is more important is the "three-character formula" often mentioned in martial arts novels: fast (rough) , Ruthless (Mongolian), accurate (see luck). The so-called "quick" means to try quickly first, if it becomes hot, expand quickly, and if it doesn't, turn quickly. When it first started, startups were faced with an unknown wasteland. Not to mention mature working methodology, that is, the division of labor between each other is not clear. Small start-up companies generally can't afford to hire senior product people, and they see large companies start to cultivate a new generation of products on a large scale, so they will naturally extend their olive branches to fresh graduates. However, as mentioned earlier, start-up companies do not have a mechanism for cultivating product people, while old product people in small companies often have multiple jobs, both as fathers and mothers, and there is no time to cultivate younger generations carefully. , Newcomers generally grow up spontaneously in their own explorations.
Specifically, in some extensive companies, the daily work of the product manager is basically as follows:
1) Open the foreign competitive product (actually the parent version) to see what new features are available, or delve into how the existing features are done .
2) After copying each interface and function description, hand it to the UI (sometimes it may not), or directly to the front-end, and then start to do it.
3) After finishing the front-end, conduct a comparison check, and then constantly urge the front-end to fix bugs.
Moreover, in addition to the above daily work, there are many chores to do, such as testing, cutting diagrams, changing code, writing soft articles, doing operations, and pulling extras.
Objectively speaking, for extensive companies, simple and crude product methodology is quite effective in terms of cost control and rapid implementation. Through "Copy to China" (copy to China) to quickly launch products, through rapid iteration to continuously optimize products, so that before others have not noticed, it has already taken the lead, grabbed part of the market share, and related There are also many successful cases.
However, this kind of product methodology of "copying with competing products without knowing why" is really too rough, and it is very possible to directly bring the product Xiaobai, which is a blank sheet of paper, directly: they can only fumble and painfully Working, in the process of constantly taking on several roles and serving as the "fire-fighting captain", it precisely ignores the core qualities and competitiveness of product people.
Type 2: Laboratory-based companies
When some domestic companies borrowed a lot of foreign products, a considerable number of companies have a more long-term vision and began to learn and borrow the culture and methods behind high-efficiency foreign teams, such as industry leaders led by Google, every day The work environment is shown to the point of horror: free snacks, bring pets to work, fully flexible working hours, and handsome work equipment. All in all, some domestically pursued "high, wealthy and handsome" have begun to learn from this culture of being tall and big, and have created the "most dazzling Google style" in the Chinese Internet circle.
The laboratory style refers to this "most dazzling Google style": recruiting people is expensive and not expensive, strictly selecting employees with high-quality personal abilities to build a capable team; the company culture strongly supports innovation, and emphasizes the freedom and equality of employees And self-driven, advocating the cultural concept of "just to be different from others"; special emphasis on team spirit, and this team spirit is not simply accommodating each other or serving the group individually, but the trust and understanding between teammates with the same idea .
In addition, the elite management of laboratory-based companies began to introduce mature product methodology, heavily digging out senior product people from major companies, and product demand analysis methods began to gradually take shape and spread under the promotion of mentors. The thinking of "technology-oriented" laboratory companies has also shifted from "what can we do" to "what should we do". Therefore, those lucky new generation product managers began to learn product knowledge systematically after entering the company, and applied them to practice, and achieved very significant learning effects. As far as the result is concerned, of course, different from the "copy and copy" of the extensive company, the laboratory company has indeed produced many unique and widely acclaimed original products, which can be regarded as a considerable contribution to the development of the Internet in China. contribution.
However, the overly publicized personality of employees is often accompanied by arrogance. All kinds of "super code gods" who are used to talking nonsense and letting go are quite dissatisfied with managers who have lost front-line development capabilities, and require employees to suppress their personality. It is not easy to do things in line with the company's business goals.
Type 3: Parental company The
parental company culture is not the traditional large corporate culture that everyone is familiar with. In fact, the level of the parental company is flatter than that of the laboratory company. The big boss may directly guide or even interfere with the details of the product. More implementation is fine. Speaking of this, everyone may think of a generation of product gods Jobs, yes, an important feature of a parent company is really a boss like Jobs.
Compared with a laboratory company, a parent company does not spend too much time on convincing people with reasoning. The domineering elders know that in the early days of the company’s establishment, methodology and data research are quite extravagant things. Complete data research and logical argumentation are nothing but self-deception. Therefore, the patriarch of a parent-type company upholds intuition, emphasizes humanistic feelings, and acts arbitrarily. Both the whole and the details are personally controlled.
The advantage of the parental company culture is that the decision-making is super fast, the execution from top to bottom is logical, and there is almost no resistance. For wrangling matters (such as the design mentioned above), it basically does not take a lot of time to discuss, and it can be directly launched online. ; But the disadvantage is, what if the decision is wrong? In fact, there are not a few faint tricks from parents. Even if it is a difficult-to-use design, it may be decided by everyone because of the seemingly "dazzling and domineering" design.
Type 4: Giant company
Whether it is a laboratory company or a parent company, the final outcome after success is to become a giant company. Needless to say, the typical Chinese giant company is of course BAT. Of course, the corporate culture of the three BAT companies may not be suitable for a unified generalization of "giant companies", because the company's initial cultural orientation and boss style have evolved to the present, and their cultural backgrounds are naturally different. But in general, giant companies must be inseparable from the following commonalities:
1) There are many hierarchical structures, and employees in any position need to manage up and down.
2) There are so many different teams, it is difficult to guarantee that you will not deal with all kinds of other teams, and you must do a good job in horizontal communication and related network management.
3) Products are relatively standardized and KPIs are relatively clear. Except for a few strategic products, there is relatively little room for play.
"The most dazzling Google style" blew in the net circle.
The laboratory style refers to this "most dazzling Google style": recruiting people is expensive and not expensive, strictly selecting employees with high-quality personal abilities to build a capable team; the company culture strongly supports innovation, and emphasizes the freedom and equality of employees And self-driven, advocating the cultural concept of "just to be different from others"; special emphasis on team spirit, and this team spirit is not simply accommodating each other or serving the group individually, but the trust and understanding between teammates with the same idea . In addition, the elite management of laboratory-based companies began to introduce mature product methodology, heavily digging out senior product people from major companies, and product demand analysis methods began to gradually take shape and spread under the promotion of mentors. The thinking of "technology-oriented" laboratory companies has also shifted from "what can we do" to "what should we do". Therefore, those lucky new generation product managers began to learn product knowledge systematically after entering the company, and applied them to practice, and achieved very significant learning effects. As far as the result is concerned, of course, different from the "copy and copy" of the extensive company, the laboratory company has indeed produced many unique and widely acclaimed original products, which can be regarded as a considerable contribution to the development of the Internet in China. contribution. However, the overly publicized personality of employees is often accompanied by arrogance. All kinds of "super code gods" who are used to talking nonsense and letting go are quite dissatisfied with managers who have lost front-line development capabilities, and require employees to suppress their personality. It is not easy to do things in line with the company's business goals. Type 3: Parental company The parental company culture is not the traditional large corporate culture that everyone is familiar with. In fact, the level of the parental company is flatter than that of the laboratory company. The big boss may directly guide or even interfere with the details of the product. More implementation is fine. Speaking of this, everyone may think of a generation of product gods Jobs, yes, an important feature of a parent company is really a boss like Jobs. Compared with a laboratory company, a parent company does not spend too much time on convincing people with reasoning. The domineering elders know that in the early days of the company’s establishment, methodology and data research are quite extravagant things. Complete data research and logical argumentation are nothing but self-deception. Therefore, the patriarch of a parent-type company upholds intuition, emphasizes humanistic feelings, and acts arbitrarily. Both the whole and the details are personally controlled. The advantage of the parental company culture is that the decision-making is super fast, the execution from top to bottom is logical, and there is almost no resistance. For wrangling matters (such as the design mentioned above), it basically does not take a lot of time to discuss, and it can be directly launched online. ; But the disadvantage is, what if the decision is wrong? real In fact, there are not a few fainting tricks from parents. Even if it is a difficult-to-use design, it is possible that it will be put on the line directly by everyone because of the seeming "crazy and domineering". Type 4: Giant company Whether it is a laboratory company or a parent company, the final outcome after success is to become a giant company. Needless to say, the typical Chinese giant company is of course BAT. Of course, the corporate culture of the three BAT companies may not be suitable for a unified generalization of "giant companies", because the company's initial cultural orientation and boss style have evolved to the present, and their cultural backgrounds are naturally different. But in general, giant companies must be inseparable from the following commonalities: 1) There are many hierarchical structures, and employees in any position need to manage up and down. 2) There are so many different teams, it is difficult to guarantee that you will not deal with all kinds of other teams, and you must do a good job in horizontal communication and related network management. 3) Products are relatively standardized and KPIs are relatively clear. Except for a few strategic products, there is relatively little room for play. 4) The division of labor is very detailed, with full-time interaction, full-time research, full-time operations and even full-time analysts. The responsibilities of the product manager are concentrated on product work.
The so-called "focus on" product work is simply a sentence: what to do? How to do it? Specifically, it is constantly raising demands on relevant functional personnel. To use an actual project, the product manager first puts forward requirements with user researchers and data analysts (if any), obtains certain conclusions, interprets the conclusions by themselves, and converts them into product requirements, and starts a series of processes: application Project establishment→kick off→product design drafts→review product design drafts→provide requirements for interaction designers and visual designers→review interaction design and visual design→provide requirements for R&D→own project management, or entrust to full-time project management Personnel → go through a series of approval procedures before going online → going online → effect return → the next round of the process begins. It can be seen from the above links that large companies pay attention to standardization, controllability, high efficiency, and easy management, so the company naturally hopes to make most of its employees a unified image like standard accessories. The advantage of this is that the company naturally has to prepare a wealth of specialized courses to help newcomers grow into professional product people, including the knowledge accumulated by the predecessors and the product methodology summarized. The shortcomings are also obvious. The standardized system of large companies will suppress the individuality of employees to a certain extent. Except for a few star employees, most product people appear to be less distinctive; in addition, too detailed division of labor leads to individual employees The skills are very single, so after a considerable number of old product people stay for a long time, once the "assembly line" is replaced, they will immediately feel a strong sense of discomfort. Therefore, there is a saying in the industry that large BAT-level companies are more like schools. Many newcomers, seniors who have changed careers, or product people with extensive backgrounds regard BAT as an academy specializing in theoretical knowledge and standardized practice, and they have taken enough courses and Project experience, "graduation" can become a professional product person, and then choose their favorite product line or company culture, and use the knowledge learned to benefit more small companies. To sum up, in different styles of companies, the job responsibilities of product managers are quite different: giant companies focus on their own work, laboratory companies emphasize personality and personal abilities, parent companies pay attention to feelings but may be partial to execution, and For extensive companies, everything is possible. Generally speaking, it is recommended that students with weak foundations give priority to "giant companies", while students who advocate personality development and superior comprehensive abilities can try to go to laboratory companies or extensive companies to take the lead. But everyone's situation is different. The specific company to choose requires a comprehensive consideration of personal situation, personality, values and future plans.