How do you work when you receive a business that you have never touched before? Where to start? Combined with specific illustrations, I shared the relevant knowledge of building an advertising business platform from 0 to 1, hoping to give you some help through project review.
In small and medium-sized enterprises, I don't know if everyone will have such troubles. An idea that the big boss suddenly had a flash of light requires you to immediately design and implement the product development. Putting aside the feasibility study of the project (because generally small businesses don’t care much about this pre-project research), how should you start your work when you receive a “one-sentence demand”? Where to start? Even in this industry and field, you have never been exposed to new business.
This article will focus on the three stages of product design (preliminary research, system design, and demand review), and take building an advertising transaction procurement system (TD) as an example to teach you how to build a new platform from 0 to 1.
1. Research stage
One day, the leader said: "We want to build an advertising platform to develop traffic business. In the future, we will realize the purchase and sale of traffic, similar to a certain treasure in the advertising industry. Alright, let's start to work separately."
Of course, this is an exaggerated description. For the development of a new business line, the preparatory work will include the adjustment of the employment plan, the formation of a new operation team, the formation of a new sales team, and a series of other company operations such as financial rehearsal, before it will be handed over to the product. and the R&D department took over.
So when the product manager receives this kind of demand from the boss, how do we carry it out? This is a bit like when we write a thesis in our university, we first need to consult various literature materials. If the new business is a new field for you, then you need to understand the basic theoretical knowledge first, the way is as follows:
Baidu/Zhihu/various forums/professional websites: Search as much as possible to find the closest keyword. After screening various articles and websites, from the initial "advertising business" search to the final accurate "advertising transaction procurement platform".
Taobao: After finding the keywords, you can go to Taobao to check to see if there is any source code and trial demo, and try to experience the functions and structure of the product.
Terminology study: Go buy a book or two on the subject. Generally speaking, the content that can be published is generally systematic and relatively authoritative. You can choose books with relatively new publication dates. After all, the Internet industry is changing with each passing day. I chose two books, "Programmatic Advertising - A Practical Manual for Personalized and Accurate Delivery" and "Computational Advertising", one for business and one for technology. When you choose books, you can also look for them from these two aspects.
Business department training: If the company has established a business department, such as sales BD class, you can ask them to give you training, which can speed up your understanding of the business.
When we have a little ink in our stomachs and basically entered the industry, we can start the next step of thinking.
2. System design
1. Define your system roles
Roles are generally divided into two types: internal users and external users. Internal is the people inside the company, such as operations. The external is the customers who use our products, sorting out the user roles that may participate in the use of the system.
2. Sorting out the business process
The system serves people and business, so we need to sort out the business processes that exist offline or will be implemented in the future. First follow the positive process, sort out step by step. The process at this time can be less standardized, and the points that need to be clarified can be marked.
After n rounds of discussions, a complete business flow chart was finalized. Including: roles, systems, and events. The system defined at this time can be a preliminary idea, and subsequent adjustments will be made according to the overall structure.
3. Functional framework split
When our core business process is sorted out, depending on the complexity of the business, many flow charts may be output. Based on these business processes, start building our functional framework.
Like our advertising platform, it is divided into three parts: official website, business background and management background. You can also use mind maps to divide systems and modules.
4. Underlying Architecture
In terms of architecture design, architects or R&D leaders are dominant, and we can discuss with them to gradually improve the underlying architecture of the system. Because we do not currently have an output architecture diagram, I found a relatively complete architecture diagram on the Internet for your reference.
5. Requirements Checklist
We need to output a detailed list of requirements. R&D can be based on your list of requirements, and the working hours can be roughly cleared. Subsequent prototype design will also be carried out based on this list.
Making a requirements list is a simple and complex job. You can learn about WBS in project management, which will be of great help to dismantling requirements, so I won’t explain it here.
The elements of the requirements list are mainly terminals, system modules, sub-modules, and function points. Because of the self-research project, I split it roughly. I found a more detailed split for your reference.
6. Information structure
In fact, the information structure, to put it bluntly, is the fields involved in each module. Sort out the business fields corresponding to each module, similarly you can use excel or mind map. The second picture is a reference example found online.
7. Draw a prototype
My habit is to choose a set of component libraries as the basis. Create the folders and pages on the left side of the prototype, and start prototyping based on the above design and planning content.
3. Demand review
When the object of your requirements review is the big boss, I suggest drawing a high-fidelity prototype, reflecting the key logic and details that need to be approved by the leader, and focusing on explaining the requirements that have the risk of change, so as to avoid the future because the leader is not clear about the requirements. Requirements change frequently.
When your review object is the business side, including but not limited to sales BD, etc. At this time, you should pay attention. Because the thinking of the salesmen is very jumpy and divergent, when you want to finalize the scope of requirements, there is a high probability that the requirements will spread endlessly, and even turn the requirements review meeting into a brainstorming.
Therefore, we need to emphasize at the beginning that the purpose of our meeting is to discuss the content of the requirements that have determined the scope of the requirements. If you need to expand, welcome to discuss with us after the meeting. During the discussion, you need to master the rhythm. Once you find that the content of the discussion has begun to spread and deviate, you need to pull back in time to let them focus on the prototype.
When your review object is a research and development partner, before explaining the specific functions, I suggest that you first give a small business explanation (make a ppt) to help everyone get familiar with the definitions of relevant professional terms and business models. Although the key functions of R&D partners are not these, I think that allowing R&D to understand the business will help them have a deeper understanding and thinking when making requirements. It's not that I don't know what system I made after I finished it.
epilogue
Normally, the career development of a product manager should focus on a certain industry for deep digging, but the current environment is getting more and more complicated, and the water is getting deeper and deeper. After all, the majority of product managers are employed in small companies, and they have to do it if there is a need. , so everyone has mastered a set of basic ideas, and I believe it is also a good growth experience to conduct in-depth learning after entering a certain industry.