Author/Xiao Nuo
A strategic product manager from Baidu.
Have done search, BI, portrait, personalized recommendation, anti-cheating, etc.
Rich experience and love life.
I. Introduction
In April 2017, the weather in Guangzhou was extremely hot and humid, and the night in Beijing was still a bit cool.
The spring breeze of Xierqi blew through every worker who had dreams and had infinite longing for the future. In the Baidu Science and Technology Park.
Manager: "You are welcome to transfer to the headquarters. I am the person in charge of the xx department. I have been working here for 6 years. Every time a new person comes, I have to have a cup of coffee and have a chat."
Xiao Nuo: "..."
Manager: "I hope you will have the ability to think independently in one year, and have your own opinions on some issues... The company also has a lot of internal training, you can often participate..."
The company does have many public classes and many lectures. As long as you want to learn, you can travel in the ocean of knowledge.
In the following year, Xiaonuo gained a preliminary understanding of product methodology through learning, accumulation and thinking.
He believes that the true methodology is not the prejudice of some people "on paper", but a method that can be used in work and life after thinking, practice and precipitation.
One year later, in May 18, Xiao Nuo left here.
2. Problems and needs
In a blink of an eye it is 2021, and today is the first day of the new year. Xiao Nuo is already sitting in the taxi to the female ticket house, and today she is going to take the female ticket to the Red Brick Art Museum.
Suddenly, he received a call from the female ticket, and the female ticket eagerly said, "Nono, I forgot my ID with the company! The art gallery is now under a real-name system and cannot enter without an ID. What should I do?!
Xiao Nuo said: "It's okay, we will go to your company to get it later."
The female ticket said: "But I still have to take a shower, blow my hair, make up..."
Xiao Nuo said helplessly: "Then I will get it. You will throw down your badge when you get downstairs at your house."
The female ticket yelled: "Oh! I left my wallet in the company with my ID card and ID card in it! What should I do?! What should I do?! I'm going to the art gallery to take beautiful pictures, huh, huh..."
Xiao Nuo thought: Harm, the problem comes again...
The work of a product manager can be summarized as a cyclic process of discovering problems, analyzing problems, proposing plans, implementing plans, and evaluating effects. The problem I have now is that the female ticket does not have an ID card to enter the art gallery.
Let's think about it, what is the essence of the problem? I need an ID card to enter the museum. Now we don’t have an ID card. How to make the “nothing” in the present become the “being” in the future is my question.
We can see that the essence of the problem is the gap between the ideal state and the current reality.
In our work, the problems we encountered can be classified into three categories: restoring to the original state, pursuing ideals, and preventing.
1. Restore the original state-analyze the reasons and take measures
For such problems, we must first find out the real cause of the problem.
The MECE principle can be used here to find out all the categories that can provide clues and find the reasons.
According to the MECE principle, Chinese are called mutually independent and completely exhaustive. Mutual independence means that they are independent of each other in classification, and there can be no overlap. Completely exhausted, that is, there must be no omissions in the classification.
In product work, we can analyze product problems from the three dimensions of function, data, and user behavior.
Suppose we are in an e-commerce business, and one day we find that the number of payers suddenly drops. Then we can analyze them one by one.
Functionally: Whether the original payment module has an iterative revision recently.
Data: analyze from the conversion funnel to see which link caused the decrease in the number of final payments.
User behavior: Seeing that on the payment page, some users have jumped to an active page.
- Pursue ideal problems-goals must be reliable
This should start from a principle—SWOT. The SWOT analysis method is used to determine the competitive advantages, competitive disadvantages, opportunities and threats of products, so as to organically combine the company’s strategy with internal resources and external environment. Analytical method.
SW analyzes the internal conditions, OT analyzes the external conditions, analyzes the position of the online product in the market, and finds the point where it can break through.
Some friends may think that this is a bit big, a bit like an analysis of a business model. In fact, we should understand this method and use it flexibly.
Suppose we are an APP for boutique e-commerce and want to build a membership system. Before we do this system, we need to investigate the membership system of competing products on the market, understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, consider the differences and positioning of the membership system of our products, the difficulties we have faced with competing products, and our future Analysis of problems encountered later. And conduct an evaluation, and finally determine how we will implement it.
- Preventive problems-find out the causes of bad conditions
The decisive difference between prevention and restoration problems lies in whether the bad state is manifested. Therefore, the solutions to these two problems are not the same.
There are two ways to solve preventive problems:
① Hypothetical substitution method: first assume that a certain unhealthy state will eventually occur, and then think about the incentives that may cause this state.
For example, when we do push push, we need to think that if one day due to abnormal reasons, push is not sent normally, then in order to detect such a situation as soon as possible, we need to build an alarm system, and we need to think about which links may go wrong. It is necessary to monitor these links. When an abnormality occurs, we can receive an alarm message.
②Point-to-surface diffusion method: consider the possible undesirable conditions from individual conditions and phenomena.
For another example, when we do push, we divide Android and ios into two systems for push. One day, we found that there is a problem with the data stream sent by Android, then we should also check the data stream sent by ios, whether this also happened problem.
3. Problem analysis and cost benefit
When Xiao Nuo was working on requirements in the past, the manager once asked several questions: What are your requirements? Who are your users? In what scenarios are these users used? How to evaluate your costs and benefits?
1. What are the requirements?
We have to figure out the real demands of users. Remember that Mr. Yu Jun’s 12 military rules for products once said: Product managers should discover needs, not create needs.
Therefore, we must not only have eyes that are good at finding problems, but we must also be able to distinguish between genuine and fake needs.
For Xiao Nuo, his need now is to get the ID card of the female ticket left in the company.
2. Who are your users?
Suppose we want to make a personalized recommendation of push, and we need to use an algorithm model. We found that the algorithm can only cover users who have behavior within 30 days, and these users have rich behaviors, most of which are old users who have completed the first order.
From this example, we can see that for the analysis of who the user is, we have to analyze from the three directions of "who is the target user", "how big is the crowd", and "what are the characteristics of the target crowd".
3. In what scenarios?
After the requirements and users have been determined, we can’t ignore the point in which the requirements occur and how to use our products.
For example, Didi is a product of travel scenarios, and the demand is to use it when users need to travel and take a taxi.
For another example, if an information app wants to do audio reading, it needs to analyze its target users and in which scenarios the function needs to be used, such as on the subway to work.
4. What are the costs and benefits?
①The relative relationship between cost and benefit affects our decision-making. Cost is divided into high cost and low cost, and revenue is divided into high benefit and low benefit. There are 4 situations in two combinations, and the low-cost and high-yield solution is what we are after.
②Cost is the value we inevitably need to pay to achieve the goal. Divided into: common cost, uncommon cost, user cost.
●Common costs-labor costs, financial costs, time costs.
●Uncommon costs-risks, sunk costs.
●User costs-thinking costs, operating costs.
So let's take a look at Xiao Nuo's demand for his girlfriend's ID card. He needs to pay manpower and time costs, and he also needs to bear the risk of mission failure or even being caught by the park security.
③When we evaluate revenue, we should consider the three perspectives of company, product, and user.
For example, if our demand is fulfilled, what will it bring to the company? Is it a direct economic benefit or an increase in the company's influence or credibility?
After we have done this function, has it reduced the user's operating cost and has it improved the user's experience?
Four, plan and evaluation
This link should be divided into the following steps: background and objectives, plan formulation, plan implementation, and effect evaluation.
1. Background and goals
In order to be able to take his girlfriend to the art gallery smoothly without losing time, Xiaonuo must go alone to get his girlfriend's ID card. Against this background and goals. Xiao Nuo began to think and formulate a plan.
2. Plan development
Xiaonuo thought: The female ticket company has three security guards, the first is at the gate of the park, and the work permit must be checked. The second channel is the access control of her office building, which has security guards and requires a swipe card to pass through the gates. The third road is the glass door on the 6th floor, which also requires a credit card.
Analysis one by one:
1. If there is no work license to pass the park entrance, is there an alternative? what! correct! When I came to her before, I had an appointment message every time. Now I use the P picture software to take a screenshot of the message to today, and I can pass the first line of defense.
2. As the second line of defense, I can think of a way to cross the gate while the security is not paying attention, but I cannot open the glass door after going upstairs. So the only way is to convince the security guard to take the initiative to help me swipe my card.
But the security guards who have seen them before have strict management. How can they break through their psychological defenses?
Xiao Nuo thought for a while, and finally had a way!
Xiao Nuo said to the crying female ticket on the other end of the phone: "I have a way to go to your company to get my ID back. Have you gotten the courier recently?"
The female ticket said: "There are so many..."
Xiao Nuo thought to herself: Oh, woman... and then said: "You forward a text message to me, and I will pick up a courier for you."
The female ticket said happily: "Okay, okay, the text message is forwarded to you, I will take a shower first, otherwise it will be too late."
Xiao Nuo said: "Okay." After another thought: No! I haven't been to your work station last time, I don't know your work place yet!
But at this time the female ticket has hung up.
3. Plan implementation
Xiao Nuo had to bite the bullet first. He showed a screenshot of a good SMS and passed the park entrance.
Then he took out the female ticket courier in the Fengchao express cabinet, took off his coat, and put it in the Fengchao cabinet without closing the door.
Wearing only a single shirt, he entered the office building with the courier in his arms, smiled at the security guard, and said, "Morning." The security guard said, "Is he working overtime today on New Year's Day?"
Xiao Nuo said: "Suddenly there was an urgent problem, so I came to deal with it. I just got down to pick up an express."
The security guard looked at him, who was wearing only a single shirt, and said, "You guys are really hard."
Xiao Nuo touched his trouser pockets, pretending to find a badge, and then muttered: "Oh, where's the badge?"
Then embarrassedly said to the security brother: "Brother, I came down to pick up the courier in a hurry, and forgot to get the badge."
The security guard said: "You can use your mobile phone's electronic badge to swipe it."
Xiao Nuo said embarrassedly: "Brother, my mobile phone and work card are in my coat and I haven't taken it down."
The security guard said, "Come on, let me help you brush it." So Xiao Nuo entered the gate.
Then he said: "Brother, I can't enter the glass door above, please use your card, I will go up and get my badge and come down."
The security guard thought for a while: "Well, then you hurry up, I have to be on duty."
Xiao Nuo repeatedly thanked him, secretly happy. Finally came in.
Xiao Nuo entered the 6th floor, passed the glass door, and fell into thought again: Where is the female ticket's workstation?
1. The last time she brought me to eat together, it was in the interview cubicle in the public area. At that time, she went to pick up the things and walked through the entrance on the right. Generally speaking, people like to take the nearest route. So it can be determined that she is in that office area, and the scope is reduced.
2. She likes all kinds of hamster themes, keyboard mats, and station decorations. Find according to this habit.
3. Two days ago, I gave her a decompressed little yellow chicken. This is for use at work. She will not take it home, so this can be used to confirm.
After the above analysis, Xiao Nuo successfully found the female ticket's work station. There was a pink wallet beside the notebook, which contained the female ticket's ID card and work card.
Xiao Nuo quickly went downstairs and swiped his card through the gates, which showed that he did have a badge, and then returned the badge of the security guard, thanked him, and walked out.
Xiao Nuo went to Fengchao Cabinet to take out her coat, put it on her body, and took a taxi to pick up the female ticket.
4. Effect evaluation
The female ticket was very happy and said to Xiaonuo: "Why are you so good! This demand fulfilled beyond expectations."
Xiao Nuoqian (biao) lian said: "Then what is necessary, we have to learn and apply flexibly if we make strategies."
The female ticket said: "You are proud of it. This is my subjective evaluation. Don't you have to objectively evaluate how well your needs are accomplished?"
Xiaonuo said: "From entering the park to leaving, it takes 15 minutes to complete, which is half the half hour I estimated. I admire myself."
The female ticket said: "Ah, it's okay, don't be stinky. Take me to the art gallery soon~"
Suddenly the alarm clock rang, Xiao Nuo pressed the alarm clock off and said: "Damn, have a nightmare again!"
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