No, product manager's capability model

Product managers are becoming increasingly popular, and there are more and more people who want to work. Many companies and teams have also established product-Centric Organizations. Naturally, there are many "Product Manager capability models" on the Internet, and everyone feels like a secret of martial arts. After cultivation, they can get involved. However, they also find that there are great differences between various models, tangle. Recently, the more I think, the more I think that the so-called capability model has fallen into a "method-centric" mindset. It is no different from "best document template" or "optimal organizational structure, the essence behind it is to first "problem center", that is, to think about "Why should we build a product manager capability model ".

There are just a few reasons: the company wants to know who to recruit, how to train, and how to develop ...... That is to say, the question is: what capabilities does the product manager need? Why do we need to develop these capabilities when we use the idea of making products? My answer is: be competent for the job at hand. Why should we be competent for the job at hand? This should not be answered. So far, we can see the key points:

Competence is more important than ability development. Different Jobs lead to different abilities.

"Competence over Competence Cultivation" is the biggest difference between school education and vocational education.Application", Because I didn't know what to do at the time, so it's totally the method center. Vocational education is"Used for learning", Is obviously learning with problems, such learning is more efficient and more dynamic. Therefore, we first put aside the "capability model" and put forward the concept of "task model". By analyzing the work done by the product manager and combining the surrounding environment and personal characteristics, we can confirm their current situation, what job is required.

This is divided into the following steps. The conclusions of each step are obtained through a large number of in-depth visits, surveys, and literature studies, these roles are the company's top management, expert product manager, product team lead, senior engineer, and new product personnel.

 1)Enumeration of typical tasks

For "product managers", this title is called, but what they do is different. In this step, we need to list what the product manager should do in your team, the capabilities required for doing this are not shown here. It is a follow-up step to get a list of "typical tasks for Internet companies and product managers.

 

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 2)Position subdivision

According to the actual situation of the company, considerLevel or direction subdivisionFor example.

Level, which can be dividedChu/Moderate/Senior Product ManagerThe primary tasks include requirement analysis, document writing, and product design. Intermediate tasks mainly involve project management, communication and collaboration, user research, and other tasks that require more experience, advanced is more inclined to business planning, product planning, team management, and other fields.

Now, the commonly used method is to divide the product manager into four directions:Product aggregtor-- Mainly responsible for product architecture and planning,Product Designer-- Biased towards demand and design,Product Manager-- Project management and team management,Product Marketing-- Responsible for operations.

Each level and direction have different requirements on the ability of each task. Here we can give a score. The following table lists the instances rated by level. The specific score is for reference only.

 

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 3)Environmental Factor Correction

Because product managers are in different environments, their requirements for various tasks are also different. We have summarized the following key factors.

First,"Industry", Such as" e-commerce "," PC software "," games "," Telecom "...... The requirements for various tasks must be different and must be discussed by practitioners in the relevant industry.

Then,Product Type", This is related to the industry. The example above is for the e-commerce industry:

-- Platform type: it relies more on background systems and has enhanced technical understanding requirements, such as e-commerce transaction line products and security products;

-- Vertical type: more commercial content, more industry knowledge requirements, such as online supermarkets and online drug stores;

-- Website type: more front-end website pages, more demanding on UED-related knowledge, such as some group buying websites and social shopping guide websites;

-- Custom: some products that cannot be classified need independent judgment.

The last is the "peripheral team". If there is a dedicated person or team to do the corresponding tasks, the requirements can be reduced. For example, there is a dedicated user research team, the requirements for user research can be reduced. If you have a full-time project manager, the requirements for project management can be reduced.

Note: It is difficult to quantitatively determine the increase or decrease of the task requirements. Therefore, the "+ 1/-1" correction is given.

 

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 4)Personal Factor Correction

Every product manager is different, so it is impossible to have a universal model, and there must be some personalized elements.

In my personal experience, we believe that the requirements can be lowered if this person has performed the corresponding job (or is partially qualified.

Personality Traits and personality factors will lead to the ability to do a good job/do a bad job, but it is very difficult to get specific, so this refers to the task preferences caused by personality. If you like to do this task, we believe that it is easy to do well. We can lower requirements, dislike requirements, and strengthen requirements as appropriate.

What are the most common tasks of the current task? strengthen the requirements and reflect "to learn ".

 

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 5)Evaluation Result

The position requirement is based on the capability requirements after the "environmental factor correction". The higher the score, the more important the selection is;

The personal requirement is the ability requirement after "environmental factor correction" and "Personal Factor correction" are added. The higher the score, the more tasks the individual needs to perform;

Sort gaps in a descending order based on the "personal requirements" value, which is more convincing. The first few are the most important efforts of this person.

 

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Let's take an example of an application, as shown in the following table.

 

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The company requires him to be an intermediate product manager. His products are platform products. Therefore, the "Product Planning" and "familiar with technology" tasks require more than 1; his surrounding team is a project manager by technicians. Therefore, the "Project Management" capability requirement is-1. His personal experience is due to two years of technical experience, therefore, the "familiar with technology" capability requirement is-1. His personality traits are introverted and not easy to communicate. Therefore, the "communication and collaboration" capability requirement is + 1. At the same time, he is very fond of "user research", so this capability requirement is-1; his current task requires a lot of data analysis work, so the "Data Analysis" capability requirement is + 1.

To sum up, the evaluation results are interpreted (for reference only ):

From the perspective of job requirements, this position has the highest requirement on product planning capabilities;

Judging from the sorting of gaps, he should give priority to the following tasks: communication and collaboration, product planning, and data analysis.

This is our exploration of the product manager capability model, which has four major upgrades:

I. From a relatively illusory "capability model" to a "task model" that is closer to the actual situation, I changed the rigid learning and application, and truly achieved what I learned.

2. a personalized model customized by individuals and teams.

3. The "static model" that never changes at any time is changed to a "Dynamic Model" with random changes. This method can be used once and every team or individual can come up with different results.

4. changing from an "ironboard" with no priority to a "cracking" that can distinguish the priorities of various tasks can help everyone determine what they should give priority to at this stage, it can also help the senior judge the learning sequence of new people to achieve personalized learning.

Of course, this is some practice in a "product-centric" organization. It must have its applicable scenarios and restrictions. Moreover, it is also a fuzzy "qualitative" model, "quantitative" is not yet available ".

Note: As for the specific solutions to be competent for various tasks, we will not list them in this discussion. I will briefly discuss several things to be done next. These practices are as follows, you must have an "Expert Group" to confirm it step by step.

I. Refine the task process: some of the tasks in the preceding table may need to be refined to an appropriate granularity to map the "task points" to "capability points.

2. competence analysis: from the "capability point" to the "task point" ing, note that the "task point" is the task itself, and the "capability point" is the task, knowledge, skills, and attitudes.

3. Build a task model: according to the requirements of a "task point", determine the requirements for each "capability point" behind the scenes, which are divided into five levels:"Memory, understanding, application, evaluation, and Creation", Improve in sequence, each capability point, corresponding to each level requires an explanation and case. Behind these steps is something like "job model.

4. Determine the learning method: how to be competent for a certain task is to participate in training? Self-learning materials? Practice? Mentoring? Or even share it with others?

5. Draw a learning path: Determine the learning sequence.