For the position or major of product manager, so far there is no corresponding major in formal schools . Therefore, our common product managers are basically transformed from other positions. So what are the common transition product manager positions? What are the characteristics of each?
Convert technical positions to products
The biggest advantage of converting technical positions into products is that you understand the technology yourself, and the advantage is more obvious for products with higher technical relevance. Before most technologies are converted into products, their logical thinking is relatively rigorous (because code written without clear logic and rigorous logic is prone to problems). When it comes to product positioning or functional design, because you understand the technology, you can first exclude some designs that cannot be realized with technology or that are too costly to implement. At the same time, you can prevent being deceived when communicating with technical personnel, and you can also give full play to your empathy and understand the other party's difficulties more easily. In this way, communication will be more harmonious and communication conflicts caused by technical issues will be greatly reduced.
Because of my pre- technical work habits, I also need to pay attention to adjustments and improvements in thinking and communication skills after switching to a product manager.
Adjustment of R&D thinking: It is easy to ignore the process of demand analysis when encountering user needs after developing a product and go directly into thinking about R&D details. If you ignore needs analysis, you will not be able to provide a more complete solution.
Communication skill development: Technical staff deal with code a lot, and many of them are not good at talking. After transforming into product managers, they need to communicate and coordinate with all parties, so they need to cultivate their communication skills.
Operation and maintenance, implementation of job transfer to products
The advantage of operation, maintenance and implementation is that it is relatively close to the user group. It has more exposure to user usage scenarios and it is easier to understand what users need. At the same time, the operation and maintenance and implementation experience has a relatively good understanding of the functions of the product itself, and when exposed to user needs and problems, it can be combined with existing product functions to provide corresponding solutions. Because I have more dealings with users, my communication skills and empathy are slightly stronger than those that convert technology into products.
However, due to frequent contact with user groups and a better understanding of user needs and problems, it is easy to form customized needs and lacks abstraction capabilities. Learn to analyze user needs, which ones can be abstracted into general product requirements, which ones can be abstracted into industry plug-ins, and which ones can be customized and developed, and develop better abstraction capabilities
Transfer testing position to product
The testers themselves know the details of the products involved in testing very well, and the details of the business logic are even clearer than the product managers. Testers with certain testing experience have a certain understanding of the design and details of product functions, and can also prevent some logical loopholes in advance.
However, due to previous work habits, testers can easily get into details and neglect to control the overall product. For testers who have just switched to a product, it is recommended to start with a module responsible for the product and gradually improve and expand it.
Operational positions transferred to products
It is more common for operations positions to be transferred to product managers to be transferred to C-side product managers. For the C-side, many times the focus of operations personnel and the focus of product managers overlap in many places, such as user pain points, conversion, retention, etc. The advantage of operators switching to products is that they are relatively keen on the market, sensitive to data marketing, have some experience in user analysis, and even know how to grasp user psychology and pain points better than product managers. At the same time, he has advantages in content structure and content innovation , and his communication skills are basically good.
Since the operators have no idea about the complexity of the technology and implementation logic, it is easy to think that it is quite simple when it looks simple on the surface . Some are even hard-line because of their strong communication skills, which will bring a lot of unnecessary trouble and development costs to development. In the past, operations staff were faced with a relatively single role of users, most of whom were C-side users. If they want to switch to B-side product managers, they need to get used to switching between multiple roles and think from their perspective.