What product Manager does your team need?

In Tencent, most departments actually adopt the form of functional or weak matrix organization structure. Centers and groups and other organizational levels are essentially functional lines, product, development, testing, operation, operations and other functional roles are the main role of product operations, and departments will be more or less a full-time or part-time PM organization to manage various cross-functional activities.

Depending on their respective circumstances and their respective understanding of the PM position, the position of the PM position also varied. With the size of Tencent and the size of the department is also growing, PM this group is also growing, how to more effectively play the value of PM, should be a question worth discussing.

Here in order to Tencent internal various institutions and corporate-level projects engaged in project management, more of the PM form, sorted out the following several common forms of PM:

Secretarial type

This type of PM typically assists in the organization of project activities by leading the functional line leaders of the project, as well as communication, recording and tracking of the implementation of the work, their own understanding of the project is less, weak judgment on project matters, weak risk identification, can not decompose project work, even most coordination activities can not be completed.

Nanny type

Nanny PM is the main feature of the project to participate in the details, more positioning for the project Team Services, such PM is usually a matter of priority, the importance of weak judgment, or their own understanding and judgment is not weak, but because of poor rejection and other reasons to become this type. Nanny-type PM is often busy with transaction processing, and the depth of the project and the focus is not enough, more easily become the second hand, the team will also inertia will not do the chores to PM to do.

Assistant Type

The assistant PM is similar to the secretarial type PM, but the assistant type PM to the business judgment ability and organization coordination ability is stronger than the secretary type, to the project understanding is relatively strong, has certain control to the project partial affairs, but lacks to the project system overall understanding and the control, usually will excessively be subjected to eldest brother's opinion, Rely on the boss of the arrangement, the boss to explain what to do, relative lack of independent thinking and insights.

Process Type

The main characteristics of process pm tend to rely on the process to solve problems, more constrained by the development process and implementation, less application of the system project management methods of management projects.

Leading type

The leading PM has strong control over the project, result-oriented, be responsible for the target, have a deeper understanding of the project, can do the focus on the project affairs, be good at exerting the team strength, and can control the project rhythm effectively, play an important leading role in the whole project process.

It should be mentioned that the above various types of PM, can not be simple to good or bad, different types of PM is usually adapted to different types of team or team at different stages of the needs. When the team size is smaller, the team communication, organization, coordination and so on are relatively simple, usually do not focus on clear project management, project management is usually the main function line at all levels of leadership or the backbone of the strong people share, or dispersed in the team, mainly rely on the team from the operation, The team may not have a full-time PM or progressive emergence of a variety of non-dominant PM.

As the team size grows, the communication, organization and collaboration between vertical teams become more and more complex, and the powerful lines of the dominant character dominate everything becomes more and more difficult, they become the bottleneck of team operation. But the project leader who is in the line of function is often difficult to completely overcome the individualism, which makes the project team conflict difficult to reconcile. In this case, the leading PM independent-led project, share the powerful character of the function line too much project management work, will help improve the overall efficiency of the team. Leading PM Results-oriented, leading Cross-functional project team to achieve project objectives, will also help to promote the horizontal integration of large functional teams, to fill the gap between vertical functional teams.

So what kind of PM does your team need?