Why do product managers exist and what is a product manager?

The reason why product managers are needed is because in some industries (such as the Internet), the "product" thing has become particularly important, and someone needs to take care of it and drive all departments of the company to achieve product goals.

A good product manager can be said to be a miscellaneous person, who must understand technology, market, and insight into the relationship between human nature and needs. Just like a story, people want a faster horse, in fact, behind this demand is the need for faster transportation, so the car was born to meet the essential needs of people for faster transportation. This is what a product manager needs to understand the essence of the user's needs, and then define a product that meets the user's needs.

There is actually a poetic saying about the existence of product managers:

The boss is looking at the clouds.

The programmer thinks about the ground.

Fine art is digressed when drawing.

Operations only like to count data with their fingers.

The design is busy traveling back and forth in parallel worlds.

This is where someone needs to consolidate these into a usable user-facing entity.

Thus, the product manager was born.

If a beginner wants to enter the study of a product manager, he must learn a variety of skills, and if he is not proficient, he must also understand.

Carry out more practical training, product managers have high requirements for experience, junior execution, intermediate planning, and senior strategy.

Find more people to set up actual combat projects, start with simple small programs, and slowly accumulate experience.

Here's how I define a product manager: Drive all parts of the company to achieve product goals.

The first puzzle is, what is the product goal? As mentioned earlier, this matter was decided when the company was founded, for example, Zhihu is to let people get better answers, and Google wants to participate in all the information technology progress of mankind. So the boss and his team came up with a goal, you should be your eunuch and gather the Manchu civil and military forces to deal with this.

Of course, most of the time, the product can communicate and evaluate the goals with the CEO team, and it is a matter of how decisions are made, and each company has its own way.

The second puzzle is why the product is driven, not the CEO, not the operating director, not the technical director? As mentioned earlier, the product manager evolved from the project manager, and the product needs to understand the CEO goals, rigorous technical logic, art interactive experience, operations and data, quality and feedback, etc. This is the significance of the establishment of a product department in the Internet era.

Each of the existing functional departments has its own very clear work objectives. In fact, in the era of software engineering, those giant companies also have project management departments.

The Internet Product Manager is responsible for the planning and promotion of Internet products, and the specific responsibilities are as follows:

1. Socks tremor is responsible for the proposal of the demand plan and the feasibility of the operation strategy.

2. Responsible for content planning, advertising space development, management and schedule operation management.

3. Integrate the data and user feedback, analyze user needs and behaviors, collect product purchases and functional requirements generated in the operation, synthesize the opinions and suggestions of various departments, make overall arrangements, discuss and modify, and formulate a feasible plan.

Competencies required of an Internet product manager.

1. Market analysis and user research capabilities.

Research the market to understand user needs, competitive status, market size and profit model, and identify potential opportunities for innovation or product improvement; Communicate with users and potential users to identify the target user groups and characteristics of the opportunity.

2. Product definition and prototyping capabilities.

This part needs to determine the specific functions of the product, which is usually described by the Product Requirements Document (PRD) to form a specific scheme including interaction design (UX) and user interface design (UI). In the process of formulating a plan, it is usually through prototyping that your own ideas or solutions discussed by the team are presented in concrete form.

The product manager is a leader who focuses on solving problems, integrates and manages various human, material and other resources, and efficiently turns solutions into actual product output

The roles and responsibilities of product managers vary slightly from company to company, but the core responsibilities are the sameWe can interpret the main work content of a product manager from the five stages of product development:

1. Product planning

The purpose of product planning is to make R&D work more orderly.

In the product planning stage, the responsibility of the product manager is to do a good job of preliminary research and output a complete product planning plan.

The main work of preliminary research includes market research, policy analysis, industry trends, competitive product analysis, customer research, etc.; After doing a good job in the preliminary research work, the product manager should further sort out the research results and data, clarify the positioning of the product, combine its own resources, clarify the business development trend, plan the direction of system construction, and finally output a complete product planning plan.

2. Demand analysis

The process of demand analysis is not a simple demand handling, the product manager first needs to classify the collected requirements according to the actual situation, such as business needs, user needs, and functional requirements according to different objects.

After classifying the requirements, the product manager can screen the requirements from the three dimensions of authenticity, value, and feasibility, filter out the false, unfeasible, worthless, invaluable, or unsatisfactory input-output requirements, and extract the essential needs of customers from the remaining requirements.

The requirements are then categorized and prioritized to help the product be organized and developed, and finally the requirements document is output.

3. Product design

The process of product design is the process of functionalizing and visualizing product requirements, and product managers need to output specific functional design solutions that can achieve demand goals to support efficient communication and business execution by relevant parties such as demanders, R&D teams, and operation teams. The main tasks of the product manager at this stage include process design, functional architecture, prototyping, etc.

Fourth, promote the realization of product goals

First, the product manager needs to coordinate the timelines of each position and further answer the questions about the needs of each position.

Secondly, the product manager should also make a correct judgment on the difficulties encountered in the development process, eliminate the interference factors of the outside world on the development, eliminate the difficulties for the development team, and make timely decisions on demand changes or technical solutions, track the progress of product research and development, and ensure the smooth progress of research and development.

In this process, the product manager should do a good job of communication and coordination with superiors and team members, maintain the consistency of information from all parties, conduct effective communication, and ensure that the product moves forward according to the established goals.

5. Acceptance and delivery of products

After the product is launched, the product manager should pay attention to the relevant data in time and do a good job of data analysis. Evaluate whether the product or function has achieved the expected effect based on the data, and if the expected effect is not achieved, the product manager should take the lead in the review work, analyze the reasons for the failure to achieve the expected effect, output perfect measures and plans, and implement them effectively. At the same time, product managers need to track customer feedback in a timely manner and accumulate data and experience for the next release or product.