In the previous article "The Growth Path of Product Managers in the AI Era (Part 1)" , we discussed the underlying framework and career model of product managers, and also discussed the needs of product managers who have just entered the industry if they want to achieve "solution delivery capabilities" What basic skills should you practice?
After 2 to 3 years of working in the industry, we have a solid foundation, accumulated experience, and recognition from the team. At this time, we need to shift from "solution delivery capabilities" to "product delivery capabilities." Today, we will discuss how professional product managers should deliver successful products.
1. General skills of product managers
The original intention of setting up the product manager position is to have someone responsible for the success or failure of the product. When we first entered this position, we may all have had a belief in creating great products and thought that we could meet all challenges through our own efforts. However, reality tells me that the success of a product cannot be achieved by the product manager alone. The success of the product depends on the success of the team, not the individual product manager.
Product managers need to know how to inspire everyone around them. Just like a navigator, he must not only lead the team toward the right goal, but also flexibly respond to various changes and challenges. Ultimately, what the product manager delivers to users is not just a solution, but a "consensus" that comes from the market, users, teams, decision-makers, partners, etc.
Ken Norton, product partner at Google Ventures, likens product management work to "glue" that can connect different fields and roles together, just like the communicator in "Star Trek" that can help people of different races. Communicate. Without this "glue," it's difficult for a product to succeed.
Therefore, product success largely depends on the soft skills that product managers possess, which are universal skills regardless of industry sector but play a key role in driving the team to deliver the right product. These skills are roughly divided into the following four areas:
"Core Skills of Product Management" quoted from "Product Management in Practice"
Communication : As a product manager, you need to be able to communicate your ideas and vision in a clear and powerful way. This includes effective communication not only with your team, but also with various stakeholders such as users, developers, designers, and executives. Good communication skills help build trust, foster collaboration, and keep projects moving in the right direction.
Organization : Organizational skills are critical for product managers because you need to coordinate multiple tasks, initiatives, and team members. This includes developing project plans, managing product roadmaps, assigning tasks, and ensuring projects are delivered on time. Good organizational skills also include effectively prioritizing tasks to ensure the most important work gets priority.
Research : Product managers need to conduct in-depth research on the industry, market, users and technology, be able to perceive industry trends and changes, have an in-depth understanding of the market competition landscape and understand user needs. Guide product decisions through research capabilities and insights to ensure products meet market needs and maintain unique competitiveness.
Execution : Product managers not only need to plan and formulate strategies, but also ensure that projects are executed as planned. This includes driving the development team, tracking progress, resolving issues and responding to changes, as well as things that go unclaimed. The ability to execute is key to converting strategy into actual results and is also key to driving project success.
Next, we will delve into the knowledge points of these general skills to help product managers better deal with complex product management challenges in different fields. The skills we need to light up are as follows:
Quality level: Responsibility, independent thinking, communication skills
Cognitive layer: business cognition, systems thinking, data thinking, psychology, project management
Influence layer: team driving force
Delivery layer: demand management, product planning
2. Product delivery capabilities: Making further progress
1. Quality level
1) Responsibility
When you first get into product management, there's a lot of enthusiasm and ambition. You may dream of becoming a product manager like Steve Jobs, creating amazing products, winning market share for the company, and leading the development of the industry. However, before we can realize these dreams, we need a crucial key factor - accountability.
Responsibility is not only the ability to complete work tasks, but also an attitude and value, covering many aspects such as active commitment, continuous efforts, overcoming difficulties, seriousness and responsibility, and concern for project and team needs. The sense of responsibility inspires product managers to lead the team to actively solve problems, ensure the smooth progress of the project, and improve the team's confidence and cohesion. This sense of responsibility shapes the product manager into a team leader, leading the entire team toward a common goal.
A responsible product manager focuses on the long-term success of the product. They regard the product as their "child" and are not only concerned about the phased delivery of the product, but also the iterative route and market performance of the product. This sense of responsibility drives them to continuously improve their products to ensure that the products not only have the functions to meet user needs, but also win high user satisfaction, allowing the products to remain competitive in the market and laying a solid foundation for the long-term success of the products.
The work of a product manager is full of challenges and changes. In this uncertain environment, a responsible product manager can calmly deal with problems, actively find solutions, face challenges firmly, never avoid problems, and strive to ensure the success of the project while also Create a reliable professional image. This kind of trust and responsibility not only earns the respect of the company and team, but also creates more career development opportunities for product managers, allowing them to take on more responsibilities and deal with more challenges.
In short, the product manager's sense of responsibility not only affects the success of product delivery, but also has a profound impact on the development of individuals and teams. Responsibility not only drives product managers to proactively identify and solve problems, but also prompts them to continuously reflect and grow, thereby demonstrating excellent professionalism and leadership, ultimately enabling them to win the status of trustworthy product leaders. This is one of the keys to a successful product manager career.
Recommended reading books: "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" and "Product Manager: From Good to Great"
2) Think independently
The ability to think independently is an essential quality for product managers. Product managers need to have the ability to proactively identify problems and propose solutions, rather than following what others say. This ability not only helps address complex problems and challenges, but also brings new perspectives and opportunities to teams and products.
Product managers with the ability to think independently will not simply rely on ready-made answers, nor will they listen to the opinions and suggestions of one party, nor will they apply theoretical frameworks in books without knowing anything. Through in-depth independent thinking skills, product managers can find new perspectives and ideas for the team and products, discover new opportunities behind problems, and thereby promote further product development.
How can a product manager make informed decisions without clear answers? The ability to think independently is not achieved overnight and requires product managers to continuously cultivate and exercise it.
First, we need to have a diverse knowledge structure. We should cultivate curiosity and actively read and study widely to broaden our cognitive fields. In addition, we must listen to the suggestions of different people and obtain multi-angle and diverse information and opinions. This helps us think about the problem more comprehensively.
Secondly, we must develop the habit of deep thinking. When you encounter a problem, don't make a decision in a hurry. Instead, calm down and spend more time thinking deeply about the nature of the problem. We must make good use of data, logical analysis methods and analytical tool frameworks to find the best solution through comprehensive analysis. Especially when we are excited about our idea, we need to habitually ask ourselves "5 whys" continuously to calm down.
Again, we need to understand the limitations of thinking. Understand common thinking limitations and cognitive fallacies, such as confirmation bias, fundamental attribution bias, Dak effect, illusion of causality, etc. This helps identify and correct thinking errors and improve thinking skills. At the same time, challenging existing opinions and assumptions through critical thinking can help us find logical flaws and thus discover the essence of the problem.
Finally, it is even more important that we regularly reflect on our decision-making processes, identify shortcomings, and improve upon them. This ability to reflect helps to continuously improve the quality of decisions and avoid making the same mistakes twice.
Recommended reading books: "Learn to Ask Questions", "The Art of Thinking", "Critical Thinking Tools", "A Simple Introduction to Logical Thinking"
3) Communication skills
Communication skills are one of the most indispensable skills for product managers. Communication is much more than the transmission of information. It includes many aspects such as listening, interpretation, coordination and influence. Excellent communication skills not only help build trust but also play a key role in fostering collaboration, problem solving, and the success of the final product.
First, product managers need to demonstrate excellent communication skills within internal teams. They must be able to clearly communicate the product's vision, goals, and requirements to development, design, operations, and other relevant teams. This ensures that the team knows what product needs to be built and with what priority it should be executed. Product managers must also know how to coordinate the work of different teams to ensure the project moves forward as planned. When problems arise, through efficient communication skills, product managers can help the team quickly identify the problem and find a solution together.
In addition, product managers also need to communicate effectively with external parties, including users, executives, investors, and other functional teams. Product managers need to communicate to understand user needs, pain points, and feedback. They also need to report project progress and stage results to executives and investors, and convey product vision and strategy. Influence the company's strategic decisions, resource allocation, and cross-department collaboration through communication.
Communication skills require us to continuously improve at work, including listening to others, managing emotions, respecting diversity, speaking and structured expression, etc. By actively improving these communication skills, product managers can create more opportunities for success for themselves and their teams.
In short, excellent communication skills are crucial for product managers, not only playing a key role in collaboration within the team, but also having a profound impact on the understanding of external stakeholders and the company's strategic decisions. The improvement of product managers' communication skills is not only the improvement of personal abilities, but also paves the way for the success of products and teams.
Recommended reading books: "Product Leadership", "Structured Expression: How to Report Work, Speech and Writing", "Product Management In Practice (Product Management Practice)"
2. Cognitive layer
1) Business awareness
The essence of product success is business success, and the product manager's business knowledge covers aspects such as strategy, market, economics, and decision-making. It helps product managers better lead the team to promote product success, and also helps the company stand out in a highly competitive market and achieve long-term sustainable business value.
First, product managers need to know how to closely integrate products with the company's business strategy. This means understanding the company's goals, market positioning, and competitive strategy to ensure that the product's features and direction are consistent with those strategies. Only in this way can the product achieve commercial success for the enterprise.
Secondly, product managers need to have a deep understanding of market demand, user behavior and competition to analyze data, gain insight into trends, identify opportunities and risks, and guide product development. At the same time, mastering economic principles and business models can help product managers formulate profit strategies, including cost-benefit analysis and pricing strategies, to ensure that products maximize profitability in the market.
Product managers also need to identify potential business risks and take countermeasures, taking into account market, competitive and business model risks to mitigate adverse impacts. These business insights help product managers make informed decisions that benefit both the product and the company's overall business.
In addition, product managers need to know how to communicate business value to different departments, including marketing, sales, development, operations, etc. Business awareness helps them communicate and collaborate better, ensuring the business goals of the product are understood and supported.
More importantly, business cognition is related to business model innovation. Product managers can drive new business opportunities through business knowledge, allowing products to reach PMF (product and market fit) faster. For modern product managers, business cognition is an indispensable core competency.
Recommended reading: "Positioning", "The Innovator's Dilemma", "Consumer Behavior", "Principles of Economics", "Behavioral Economics", "Consumer Behavior", "Game Theory", "Crossing the Chasm", "New Generation of Business Models", "AI" economics"
2) Systems thinking
In the daily work of product managers, we often face complex problems, but most people solve the problem by treating the headache and the pain. The immediate problem is solved and the short-term data indicators improve, but the product does not become better. Better, and may create more problems in the long run. Why is this?
Because many complex problems contain numerous interrelated factors and variables, our brains prefer to process specific information linearly.
By learning knowledge and applications in related fields such as systems theory, systems thinking, systems engineering, and systems analysis, we can develop our ability to think about systems. Allowing us to better understand the logic of how systems work, solve problems more effectively, and make more comprehensive decisions is a highly valuable skill for both individuals and organizations.
First, systems theory gives us a holistic perspective. Qian Xuesen, a famous Chinese scholar, defined a system as follows: A system is an organic whole with specific functions formed by a combination of several interacting and interdependent components or elements. The whole system has new properties and functions that are different from the constituent elements. . Therefore, we cannot just focus on local details like a blind man touching an elephant. We must pay more attention to the behavior and interrelationships of the entire system. In this way, we can gain a perspective beyond the local and understand the nature of the problem more comprehensively.
Secondly, systems theory gives us a method to study systems. Systems thinking breaks down systems into their constituent elements, interactions, structures, boundaries, and environments. We can understand how these elements are related to each other and affected by the external environment by using modeling methods and tools . Common modeling models include graphical models (such as system cycle diagrams), conceptual models, and mathematical models.
Finally, systems theory allows us to understand the universal properties and characteristics of systems, such as purpose, functionality, dynamics, hierarchy, correlation, self-organization, delay, resilience, adaptability, etc. We can better predict the behavior and response of the system, helping us better predict the trend and future of the system.
In summary, in the modern business environment, the product itself is a complex system involving numerous factors and interactions. Product managers need systems thinking to understand this complexity and get to the root cause of problems in order to develop effective solutions and make informed decisions.
Recommended reading: "The Beauty of Systems: Systems Thinking for Decision Makers", "The Fifth Discipline", "Systems Thinking (Platinum Edition) Dennis Sherwood", "Introduction to Systematic Thinking"
3) Data thinking
Data Thinking In the AI era, data plays a vital role. Whether you are a large enterprise or a startup, you are constantly generating and accumulating massive amounts of data. Data thinking has become one of the essential skills for product managers. Data thinking is a way of thinking that integrates data into decisions and products.
In product work, product managers need to understand data, apply data and avoid data traps.
First, product managers need to have data analysis skills to understand product problems and user needs. By analyzing data, they can discover patterns, trends, and relationships to better solve problems and meet user expectations. Product managers need to learn common data analysis tools or languages, such as Excel, SQL, Python, etc., and monitor key indicators and user behavior through data dashboards.
Secondly, product managers must translate insights from the data into practical applications for the data to be valuable. Product managers translate data insights into product strategies to support product development and improvement. Regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the strategy by defining data indicators and conducting reviews. In addition, for AI products, data is the key nutrient for algorithm models, and effective data collection and application are key factors to ensure model performance and product success. We need to know how to build data pipelines for AI products to support data collection, processing, training and application. At the same time, we must also pay close attention to industry best practices and regulations to ensure the legal and compliant use of data.
Finally, we also need to identify various pitfalls in data analysis, such as selection bias, confusion between correlation and causation, etc. Product managers must be data literate to identify and avoid these pitfalls. We review data sources, validate assumptions, discuss data with other team members, and ensure data accuracy and trustworthiness. Only by using data can we better achieve product success.
Data thinking is an indispensable core competency for product managers. It is not just a skill, but a strategic advantage that can bring huge value to products and businesses. By understanding data, applying it, and avoiding data pitfalls, product managers can better drive product success.
Recommended reading books: "Data Analysis in a Simple and Easy Way", "Statistics in a Easy Way", "Debunking Data Bullshit", "Data Thinking: From Data Analysis to Business Value", "Product Manager Data Analysis Practical Manual", "Lean Data Analysis"
4) Psychological cognition
Psychological knowledge helps product managers better understand users, optimize user experience, improve product positioning and decision-making, thereby better meeting market demand and increasing the probability of product success. These knowledge points should become an important part of the product manager’s toolbox in order to better perform their duties.
Understanding user needs is key to product success, and psychology is the key to exploring user needs and behaviors . Psychology can help product managers better understand the psychological mechanisms behind users’ behaviors and needs. By understanding users’ decision-making processes, emotional responses, and motivations, it helps product managers more accurately meet user expectations.
In addition, product managers need to continuously improve the user experience of the product to make it easier to use and enjoyable to experience. Psychological cognition helps understand users’ attention, cognitive load, and emotional responses. This enables product managers to design interfaces and features that are more aligned with users’ cognitive and emotional needs.
At the same time, psychological cognition can also help product managers better manage product growth, design incentives, and increase user adoption rates. For example, reward systems and scarcity strategies can help product managers guide users to take specific actions, such as signing up, purchasing, or sharing.
In addition, at the user research level, psychological cognitive abilities can guide product managers to conduct effective user research and experiments. This includes methods such as interviews, observations, surveys, and A/B testing, which can help product managers verify and improve product design to ensure that the product meets user needs.
By applying knowledge of psychology, product managers can more successfully meet market needs, create superior products, and stand out in a competitive marketplace. Therefore, not only the technology industry, but also product managers in all walks of life should pay attention to psychological cognition in their work, which will be one of the keys to their career success.
Recommended reading books: "Thinking, Fast and Slow", "Psychology and Life", "Consumer Psychology", "Influence", "Design Psychology", "Cognitive Psychology", "Social Psychology", "Motivation and Personality" (Maas Lowe's Hierarchy of Needs Theory) "Addiction" "User Experience Measurement"
5) Project management awareness
Through in-depth understanding of project management knowledge, product managers can ensure that the team collaborates efficiently throughout the entire iteration cycle, eliminate potential risks, and achieve successful product delivery.
In project management, there is a well-known concept called the " Impossible Triangle ", which includes three elements: time, cost and scope. Product managers need to understand that with limited resources, it is impossible to meet the demand for high-quality and numerous products at the same time and still ensure on-time delivery. Product managers need to make trade-offs between these factors to ensure a balance between project goals and customer needs.
Product managers should be familiar with common development models such as waterfall and agile development. Especially in Internet projects, agile development can better respond to rapid changes in market demand and ensure that products can adapt to new challenges and opportunities in a timely manner. By mastering the core principles and methods of agile development, such as Scrum and Kanban, product managers can reasonably plan versions and write user stories to clarify product functions and requirements. Through fast, agile and continuous delivery, we can obtain user feedback in a timely manner and provide direction for the product.
Understanding the basic concepts of project schedule and risk management is critical for product managers to translate product planning into project execution. This helps ensure projects move forward as planned and expected, and that when challenges are faced, they are responded to quickly. Product managers need to integrate the product roadmap with the project management process to ensure that feature iterations of the product are consistent with the overall product strategy. This includes project planning, resource planning, and identifying and responding to project risks.
In short, project management cognition can help product managers better manage products, ensure that products are consistent with strategy, and efficiently meet user needs. This knowledge will enhance the professional competitiveness of product managers and help you stand out in a highly competitive market.
Recommended books to read: "The Myth of the Man-Month", "Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide)", "Agile Software Development: Principles, Patterns and Practices", "Scrum and XP in the Smoke"
3. Influence layer
Team driving force
The team driving force of product managers refers to their ability and influence in the team to promote the team to work towards a common goal and achieve success through a positive attitude, cooperation, leadership and coordination. This drive covers many aspects, such as responsibility, leadership, communication skills, etc.
The source of team driving force is the product manager’s sense of responsibility. Product managers not only care about their own tasks, but also about the team's overall goals and project progress. They are willing to take on tasks proactively, work continuously, and overcome obstacles to ensure projects proceed as planned and are delivered successfully. They set an example within the team and influence others through their actions and attitudes to establish a reliable image.
In addition, product managers also need to show certain leadership skills in the team. They can coordinate resources, mediate conflicts, promote cooperation, and ensure that team members are working closely together under the same goal. They need to have the ability to motivate and motivate team members, help team members overcome difficulties and maintain a positive attitude.
In addition, the product manager’s communication and cooperation skills are also an important reflection of the team’s driving force. They need to communicate effectively with team members in a variety of roles, including developers, designers, marketers, and more. Through clear communication skills, product managers can convey the goals, needs, and priorities of the project, ensuring that team members all understand and share the same information. In addition, product managers are also the information channel between users and the team. They proactively bring feedback from users and the market to the team, motivating the team to continuously improve the product. In the face of bad feedback, product managers can also actively make adjustments to ensure that the team can move forward on the right path.
In short, the team driving force of product managers is that they play an active leadership role in the team, focus on the overall success, actively collaborate, solve problems, promote decision-making, and always maintain a sense of responsibility and enthusiasm for focusing on the product. This ability is critical to assisting teams in achieving shared goals and driving product success.
Recommended reading books: "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", "The Fifth Discipline", "Revelation: Building Products Users Love", "Product Leadership: How Great Product Managers Build Great Products and Teams"
4. Delivery layer
1) Demand management
Requirements management covers requirements collection, analysis, prioritization, PRD documentation, review, communication, acceptance and changes. With limited time and resources, product managers need to use excellent demand management techniques to ensure that products are delivered according to user expectations and business goals. We must not only make reasonable assessments and decisions, but also respond flexibly to changes and conflicts. Ensure that products can be delivered to users on time with guaranteed quality.
In daily work, demand management usually revolves around the product's phased goals (or version iteration plan) and the product demand pool (Product Backlog). After the product is launched, the phased goals of the product will also change with user feedback and project development. Therefore, we need to regularly calibrate the requirements with the overall goals of the product, and adjust the functional features and priorities of the planned version. At the same time, the product manager must maintain transparent communication with the team and stakeholders, and promptly update the progress and changes in requirements. Avoid information asymmetries and misunderstandings.
In addition, in the process of project advancement, the biggest mistake in demand management is to spend a lot of time and resources on functions that have no value, causing the project to deviate from the goal and the value cannot be verified for a long time. Many times, deciding what not to do is more important than deciding what to do. Therefore, weighing requirements and prioritizing them is an important job for product managers. We need to understand some important value assessment models to help us better identify and prioritize requirements. For example, ROI (Return on Investment), KANO model, RICE (Importance, Impact, Confidence and Effort) model, MoSCoW model (Must have, Should have, Could have, Won't have), ICE (Impact, Information, Effort) ) and value-effort matrix.
In addition to writing a high-quality PRD, the professionalism of a product manager is more important than knowing how to verify a meaningful requirement at the lowest cost and in the shortest time . Especially in the early stages of a project, there are many uncertainties. No matter how perfect the idea may seem, it may not withstand the test of reality. It is especially important to quickly collect market feedback. This requires product managers to have the MVP thinking of lean startup.
Recommended reading books: "User Stories and Agile Methods", "Software Requirements (Third Edition)", "User Story Maps", "Redefining Product Roadmaps (Product Roadmaps Relaunched)", "Lean Startup", "Lean Startup in Action", "AI Product Management" 》
2) Product planning
In product planning, product managers need to think deeply about many key factors to ensure that the product can meet market needs and achieve business goals.
First, product managers need to establish a clear product vision and goals to help the team have a clear understanding of the future. This requires in-depth market research, industry trend analysis and understanding of the competitive landscape, as well as the collection and analysis of user feedback. These steps help determine product positioning, competitive strategies, and propose unique value propositions and business models, as well as resource requirements to achieve stage goals. These contents are usually precipitated into business requirements documents and used to apply for resources for project launch.
Product managers then need to translate the vision and goals into a clear, actionable product roadmap. The roadmap shows the product’s phased goals, milestones, key features and launch dates for different versions. After having a product roadmap, the product manager also needs to promote the team to reach a consensus. Allow the team to clearly understand the strategic rhythm of the entire project and advance work in an orderly manner. Usually these contents will be deposited into market requirements documents or project management documents.
In the AI era, in addition to focusing on regular functional requirements, product managers also need to know how AI modules can better integrate with application scenarios. If it is an AI First product, you need to consider continuously optimizing and improving the AI model by creating a data flywheel when planning the product . Therefore, we also need to pay special attention to data needs and data experience.
Finally, potential risks and challenges must also be identified during the planning process, because market changes and business evolution may affect the original product planning. Therefore, product managers formulate corresponding response strategies and need to regularly revise the roadmap and plans to maintain Keep up with the market. Additionally, focus on compliance, ethics, and security needs.
Recommended reading books: "User Story Map", "Product Roadmaps Relaunched", "Product Manager Methodology", "Lean Startup", "Lean Startup in Practice", "Software Requirements (Third Edition)", "AI Economics"
3. Summary
To sum up, it can be seen that product manager is by no means a position without barriers. They need to demonstrate exceptional qualities and skills on multiple levels to ensure product success.
At the quality level, responsibility, independent thinking and excellent communication skills are crucial. At the cognitive level, business cognition, systems theory cognition, data cognition, psychological cognition and project management all play key roles. The influence level requires product managers to have the ability to lead and motivate the team. Finally, at the delivery level, demand management and product planning are core tasks.
We can feel that this is a position that requires extremely high comprehensive capabilities. Product managers must have both strategic planning and practical implementation capabilities. They must not only cope with the challenges of market competition, but also solve complex and changeable problems in order to ensure Products succeed in a changing environment.
There is a saying in Buddhism: "All dharmas arise from causes and conditions, and all dharmas die from causes and conditions." This means that all things are created or destroyed by the interaction of countless factors and conditions. Everything is flowing and changing, and there is no single cause that can explain everything.
Quantum entanglement of photons captured in real time is surprisingly similar to Tai Chi diagram
Similarly, the work of a product manager is also full of karma and coincidence. Whether it is personal development, team success, user needs or market competition, only by constantly understanding the causes and conditions between things can we find the path to success.
Looking back on my entrepreneurial experience, during due diligence for an angel round of financing, an investor asked me if I believed the product could be successful. I answered firmly: "I believe that the success of the product is equivalent to the success of the team. Although our team only has a few people, it is small and well-organized, covering areas such as algorithms, development, products, and markets, but everyone has rich knowledge. With experience in the industry, we all can stand alone. The most important thing is that we all believe that 'universal large-scale knowledge graph technology can help more people succeed'. With the continuous iteration of models and algorithms, it will have wide applications in the future. In addition, It only took us just four months to bring a fully usable AI product to the market, which has proven the strong execution ability of our team. Although the entrepreneurial process is full of challenges, I firmly believe that such a team can are the ones most likely to succeed.”
Soon after, we successfully raised millions of dollars in angel investment. In many decisions, sometimes trusting the team is more important than trusting your own plan. This may be the true meaning of "the origin of causes and conditions" expressed in Buddhism - the time, place, and people are favorable, and all dharma arises from causes and conditions.
I have put the information mentioned in the article on my knowledge planet. If you need it, you can add it to my planet.
Product thinking in the AI era: How to create commercially viable AI products?
