Empathy: from the user's point of view

Pay attention everywhere

Heartless: Be thick-skinned, and don't be afraid of being scolded for being different from programmers. The product manager mainly deals with people, and has to organize and handle many complicated relationships and work. Good communication skills, organization and coordination skills, resource utilization ability, and promoting and coordinating the cooperation of various departments in an orderly manner are the comprehensive abilities needed by a product manager. Therefore, it is not easy to be a good product manager, and it is essential to cultivate various qualities.

The product manager should coordinate all kinds of relationships, including people in R&D, testing, documentation, marketing, sales and other departments, and launch the product as scheduled while ensuring the quality. Everything is achieved by people, and the main thing to coordinate is human resources. It is absolutely impossible to occupy the time of all testers because of completing an OEM project. There is not much difference in communication between different departments, but the leaders of different departments may do things differently. Therefore, on the one hand, it depends on the degree of cooperation of the other party, and at the same time, we must learn to talk to the right people at the right time. Only by solving the problem can things move forward effectively. Especially in the absence of affiliation, people should interact well, express their ideas to others very well, and persuade these people to cooperate in doing things.

The work of product manager is quite trivial, and it is necessary to deal with various relationships and progress, unlike other jobs with their own emphasis and professional fields. So how to do things efficiently in one day is particularly important.

Focusing on the target market, market research, market positioning and market segmentation, it is a very important job to carry out marketing and product management by comprehensively considering factors such as products, prices, channels, promotion, public relations and services. The so-called market feeling, more importantly, is how to generate some strategies through market phenomena, rather than the other party's price reduction itself, and the other party advertises itself. The so-called strategy is to start with product positioning, user positioning, price and competitors, understand their strengths and weaknesses, find out where the opportunities are and where the threats are, analyze them and formulate future strategies. These qualities can not be obtained by looking at market propaganda and reports, but need a lot of information feedback analysis, relying on experience and feeling.

As the person in charge of a product, the product manager is under great pressure. Although in some companies, the success or failure of the product is not necessarily related to the income of the product manager, if some aspects are not well thought out and the master disk has problems, the whole batch of products will be destroyed at once, which will bring great losses to the company, or for some reasons, some people fail to communicate well or arrange the time, which will lead to problems and the product cannot be delivered as scheduled, and the product manager still thinks it is the "culprit". These are all pressures.

Product managers need to have the ability and motivation to solve problems independently, treat products as their own children, and do things with enthusiasm and passion. This enthusiasm determines that he is active, not passive, in order to continuously improve his value and ability.

Technology can be learned, but quality is difficult to cultivate. For a successful product manager, some qualities are essential.

There is such a group of people who have an instinctive love for products, regard everything in life as products, and have love and respect for excellent products. This kind of enthusiasm is an essential quality for product managers, and it is their motivation to overcome difficulties and improve products day and night. This enthusiasm can infect team members and inspire everyone.

This trait is easy to distinguish. You can ask the candidate to talk about his favorite products and reasons, talk about products in different fields and products he hates, and ask the other party how to improve his favorite products if given the opportunity. Enthusiasm is hard to disguise, and hypocrisy is easy to expose.

The ideal product manager does not necessarily come from the target market of the product (this situation has advantages and disadvantages), but he must be integrated into the target market. This feature is especially rare for high-tech enterprises that manufacture mass products. We tend to understand users and markets from our own perspective. In fact, the experience, preferences, values, perception, tolerance and technical understanding of the target users are likely to be very different from ours.

You can ask the candidate about the target market of the product and let him talk about how to put himself in the other person's shoes. To understand the applicant's feelings about the target market, the most important thing is to see whether the other party respects the target market and wants to integrate into it, or intends to change the user's habits.

Empathy is particularly important for international products and products targeted at specific regions. Although there are similarities between different cultures, there are also many differences. Some differences have nothing to do with the product, while others are crucial. It should be examined whether the candidates have enough knowledge of the target market and can distinguish the difference between them.

People's intelligence level is irreplaceable. Product management needs insight and judgment, so it must have a keen mind. Diligence is of course necessary, but just doing this job is not enough.

It is easy to recruit smart people, and the result depends largely on the ability and reliability of the recruiter. As the saying goes, "Birds of a feather flock together, so do people.". One way is to test candidates' ability to solve problems. What is commendable for Microsoft is that an in-depth and effective interview is to examine the candidate's ability to solve problems. Usually, one or more experts in this field will investigate a problem in depth. The interviewer doesn't care whether the candidate knows the correct answer, but values the candidate's ideas and methods to solve the problem (intelligence is better than knowledge). If the candidate answers correctly, the interviewer will adjust the question slightly and ask the candidate how to deal with it in the new situation. Repeat this process until the examinee is forced to deal with the situation of not knowing the answer and tell the solution.

Each team role has different obligations and efforts. The product manager shoulders the future and destiny of the product and is definitely not suitable for people who are anxious for comfort. Even if you master the skills of time management and product management, the product manager still has to put a lot of energy into the product. Can a successful product manager have time to enjoy a leisurely family life? I believe I can do it as long as I have enough experience. However, if you expect to work only 40 hours a week and forget your work after work, it is unrealistic.

How hard does it take to be a successful product manager? On this issue, I have always been honest with the candidates. Product management can never be measured by time, and the effort is not excessive. Most of the "firemen" who are temporarily found in an emergency are not suitable product managers.

In the long project cycle, the efforts and obligations that product managers need to make are not immutable. Some stages are relatively easy, while others are very tense. However, the degree of concern and anxiety of competent product managers and their enthusiasm for making efforts will not change.

Among all product team members, the product manager can best embody the values of the company and products. Usually, the product manager does not directly manage the team members, can't ask others to execute orders, and must influence and convince colleagues around him through actions. This influence is based on mutual trust and respect, which requires the product manager to be an upright person.

Product manager is the hub between product team, sales team and company executives, and often has to coordinate and deal with various problems, such as supplying goods in advance and meeting the special requirements of big customers. How the product manager handles these problems is all in the eyes of colleagues.

Trust and respect need time to develop, and product managers can only become real team leaders by demonstrating their quality and ability through work. If the product manager treats his colleagues insincerely and selfishly, it will inevitably affect the work efficiency of overall unity. Although product managers don't have to be proficient in everything, they should know what each member is best at, respect everyone's willingness to give full play to their work expertise and fully trust everyone.

It is never easier to examine a person's integrity than to examine his intelligence, and it is even more difficult to examine the integrity of a strange candidate. For those candidates with work experience, you can ask them how to cope with the pressure at work and ask them more details about their work.

Many people think that experience can make people feel confident. If self-confidence can only be built by experience, why are many product managers who have worked for many years not confident? On the contrary, college graduates who have just entered the society are often full of self-confidence (although this self-confidence usually stems from ignorance of their own situation).

Confidence is a very important quality. Company executives, product teams and sales teams all need to see the confidence of product managers to ensure that their time, money and efforts will not be wasted. Confident people are more persuasive and more likely to become leaders that people are willing to follow.

A competent product manager regards himself as the CEO of the product, and is willing to take full responsibility for the ultimate success or failure of the product, and never makes excuses. Although he knows that there are many difficulties to overcome when the product is successfully listed on time-difficult development, long development time, high cost, complex products and so on. He understands that it is his responsibility to foresee and solve these problems.

This does not mean that the product manager should do everything respectfully and supervise everyone's work, but should take responsibility in time when problems arise and encourage everyone in time when things are smooth. A competent product manager knows that although the realization of products can not be separated from everyone's assistance, he is responsible for his own product creativity.

Mastering some important skills is the key to building a successful product. I believe that as long as you have excellent personal qualities, all skills can be acquired.

Many successful product managers are engineers, because planning products depends largely on understanding new technologies and how to apply them to solve related problems.

Excellent product managers don't need to invent or realize new technologies themselves, but they must have the ability to understand and explore the application potential of technologies.

There are many ways to cultivate the ability to understand technology, such as attending training courses, reading related books and articles, consulting programmers and architects, and participating in brainstorming of development teams.

Product managers should give priority to solving important problems. There is a lot of interference in the process of developing products. Whether the product manager can concentrate on solving key problems, resist the impulse to add functions, and be free from the influence of key people or important customers depends on whether the product manager has enough self-discipline-not only to abide by the company system, but also to be strict with himself.

Almost all products have some unimportant functions-these functions have no effect on improving sales and user satisfaction. If these functions are removed, the product will even be loved by more users because of its simplicity and ease of use.

The world of e-mail, instant messaging and mobile phones is full of interference. You may come to work early in the morning, have a hard day's work, even forget to eat or drink, and come home late at night only to find that you haven't finished an important job in the end. Time is spent on "fire fighting" and dealing with "emergency" events.

The product manager needs to skillfully and quickly distinguish between important tasks and urgent tasks, and plan and arrange the time reasonably. If the product manager can't concentrate on the really important tasks, then the product is bound to fail.

A tired product manager who works 70 hours a week. They spent all their time and energy on work, and their physical strength was overdrawn to the limit. The most terrible fact for them is that everything they do is useless. To this end, I intentionally added time management and reasonable arrangement of work tasks to the training course. The product manager's time should be used to change the status quo, instead of being busy with meetings and replying to emails one after another. There are many things that are not worth doing.

As the spokesperson of the product team, the product manager should coordinate the work between the team and the financial department, marketing department, sales team and company executives-you must use concepts and terms that these people can understand.

I think the product manager should be bilingual. This does not refer to Chinese and English, but refers to that product managers can discuss technology with programmers, and also discuss cost structure, marginal effect, market share, product positioning and brand with management and marketing personnel. educational training

The product manager is responsible for everything in the whole product life cycle, so the product manager needs technical knowledge related to the product development stage. In the field of software development, product managers are generally born in R&D and have received relevant training in marketing.

work experience

More than 5 years working experience in product development and management, good resource integration ability, communication and coordination ability and written report ability, independent problem solving ability and strong market analysis ability, sensitive to product and data operation, clear and organized thinking, able to work under great pressure. For large companies, product manager is a very important role. Because the product manager is responsible for the success or failure of the whole product, the product manager has the right to intervene from research and development to production and sales. But in a small company, the situation is different, and the power will be relatively small, but the product manager is very helpful to improve his innovation ability and choose to start a business. Product managers are generally developed from product specialists.

What should be considered at the strategic level?

At the level of product planning and implementation

Product development team management

Product implementation and promotion

Because different companies have different responsibilities to product managers/product designers, they do different things. But at least meet the requirements of the company, this is the first thing to do. Prototyping: Axure, Mockplus, fireworks, Photoshop, mock bird(Web), Balsamiq prototype, Omnigraffles, etc. Different from other prototype tools, Mockplus has the function of evaluation, which is more convenient for design and improves work efficiency.

Project management: PriciseProjectManagement(PPM), Project (Microsoft product), Todolist, Excel, Sheet, Gcalendar, Google task, trac, outlook.

Online collaboration: SVN, Google Docs, Mockplus

Test feedback: test center, QC, Jira, Bugzilla, Firebug, TestDirector, IETester.

Demand pool management: mantis

Team communication: QQ, outlook, MSN, GTalk, Picture-and-Voice (accurate communication).

Tool recommendation: download more.

Note-taking software: Evernote (Evernote), Onenote (Microsoft product), Mike, as the saying goes, taking notes is light.

Code editor: Editplus, UltraEdit, Sublime Text 3, Textmate, Notepad.