Product expert Marty Cagan: Do not just encode the person

Marty Cagan is a world-renowned product management expert who served as vice president of Netscape and senior vice president of ebay product management and design.

Recently, reporters in the "Pm-china first Product Manager Summit forum" on him to do a special visit, please him to share his product management process.

The work of a program ape

"Procedural ape": As far as I know. You have graduated from the University of California and Stanford University.

What is the difference between these two experiences?

Marty Cagan: Like most people in this industry. I majored in computer science at the University of California. Later, I went to Stanford University to build an MBA-like professional, the tuition is very expensive. Learning is a business thing.

At the University of California, my life is basically spent on the busy, because I spend a lot of time on programming. No way, this is my biggest hobby. Then I used to be a tennis coach and teach girls to play tennis. When the coach's income is used to pay for the tuition.

There is no special impression of the other, in short, play more learning.

"Procedural ape": Is your first job a program ape?

Marty Cagan: After graduating from the University of California, I went to HP Labs and did 10 years of program ape. We mainly do research on object-oriented and rule-based language and tools. At the time, HP Labs were great. It is a place where many excellent program apes dream of. It is a research-based laboratory. Just like Google X labs. And then later. I created the sesd (HP software Engineering Systems Division) together with you.

Make a career as a product manager

"Procedural ape": Since you have such a good development in technology. Why do you want to switch to product management?

Marty Cagan: Product Management at HP Labs is particularly good, and I like the way they do things. And do not want to always be in other people's products do just code people, I also want to do products. So. Based on these considerations. I started my knowledge of product management in HP Labs. It was almost the same 5-year period thereafter. I do both programming and product management, which makes me very busy. But at the same time also happy in the midst.

"Procedural ape": What was your first product? How do you feel?

Marty Cagan: My first product was generated in HP Labs, a financial analysis system designed to help financial companies analyze investment gains and losses. At that time I was a rookie program ape, just know to do according to what others told me to do. It's just that in the process, though, you just have to run it the way someone says it is. But I do know a lot of things from it. Can also be said as a manager of the door brick.

I am very glad that I have a very good manager. He has given me a lot of help in how to be a better program ape. You know, in America. The computer science taught at the university is quite different from the actual computer science work in the company. The manager told me the difference between professional programming and university programming, and convinced me that the primary responsibility of a qualified manager was to help his program ape become an excellent program ape. It made me aspire to be a good manager.

But the reality is that most managers don't care how to help a program ape grow better.

Just at Hewlett-Packard, it was felt to be the most important job for all managers. I am very grateful for this and I am also committed to doing so.

To be able to say, in the 10 years of Hewlett-Packard, I learned how to do the real "good", mainly how to become good program Ape and the manager of the two sides.

The best products

"Procedural ape": What do you think is the best product you have done?

Marty Cagan: This is very difficult to answer. No matter what a good product does not belong to me. It belongs to the whole team. It was completed by the great designer and the ape of the program. If I had to choose, there were two products that made me proud.

One was made at Hewlett-Packard, called Softbench.

It's a development environment, it's very practical for program apes, and we really do it by heart. Softbench sales for nearly 20 years. is undoubtedly very successful. It was also one of the best products we did. But Softbench is not desktop software, it is only used by professionals. There is also a Netscape Platform. It is a product based on an Internet platform that can be used by very many people. In order to do this product, hundreds of people dedicated to a lot of, I am only one of them.

Netscape have a lot of very smart people, all of them are Silicon Valley Daniel. I've learned a lot from them. So to speak, in Netscape. As if in a university with the world's most famous professors. And these professors happen to be just as prepared for you. I can feel the excitement every day, experience the rapid progress of technology and the astonishing increase in the number and quality of our customers. These feelings almost all arrive at the same time every pore of the body, very dreamy. All along, I have decided that Netscape is the best company I have ever worked for. I would like to work in this kind of team.

"Procedural ape": What do you think is the best product in the world in the last ten years?

Marty Cagan: Over the past decade, good products abound. The achievements are also amazed by the world's success.

Some people say Google AdWords is best because it earns a lot of money for Google. But I wanted to vote for Facebook because it changed the lives of billions of of people around the world. It's a great achievement to be able to contact friends and family very easily through it. Of course, Twitter is also very good. In addition, there are a lot of other very small but very good products, Dropbox is one of them, it with the help of cloud computing, to provide synchronization of local files networked storage online applications, has been a huge development. In short, good products are hundreds, but turnip greens. Each their own, I can only talk about my feelings.

Founding Company

Program Ape: Tell us about your continuus, AOL and ebay. What are the gains?

Marty Cagan:continuus is a start-up company and I added this company as co-founder. Over there. I learned how startups should do their jobs. It's valuable and continues to affect me.

I am not long in AOL, but I have accumulated a lot of experience in Internet services.

I'm interested in this, knowing that AOL was a named sizable big Internet service company. ebay has developed my ability to build a new company and a product organization, which is a very special experience. Ebay has built a business model that's amazing. Over there. I was able to build the work organization I admired, which is undoubtedly a wonderful experience.

But after working with so many companies, I feel tired: every day is endless teaching and talking.

Program Ape: So you turn to the idea of creating a company?

Marty Cagan: That's it, I created SVPG (Silicon Valley product group).

"Procedural ape": What kind of business does SVPG engage in?

Marty CAGAN:SVPG Although there are only 4 people at the moment, but we have worked in other companies before, and all believe that they do not want to work for other companies, but to help the company grow, so we get along very happily.

We mainly help the new company. Advise and invest as a friend, just like an incubator. There are already so many such incubators in the world. There are a lot of numbers in China. There are so many startups in Silicon Valley that they desperately need help, and we're happy to be surrounded by startups, and we're setting up offices in Silicon Valley.

We will do our best to help companies that need help, and today we have nearly 50 companies working with us at the same time.

"Procedural ape": What's the difference between you and Paul Graham's Y Combinator?

Marty Cagan: No doubt. Y Combinator is one of the best incubators in the world. In fact, it is more like a Silicon Valley company, there is a lot of money. And Svpg is just a consultant. My partner is also in Silicon Valley to do product management. So we don't have much money. Suppose to be combinator by Y. is a very fortunate thing.

Because you can not only get the investment. And can also get very valuable advice.

The most believed product management concept

"Procedural ape": What is your most belief in product management philosophy?

Marty Cagan: This is really very difficult to answer. I just want to say two points.

The point is. Great product managers know what they don't know. They do not feel that they know the whole thing, do not know the matter or the majority. They believe that they must gather together to determine what can and cannot be done. All of these decisions are based on solid evidence rather than a thin-air idea.

Another thing is that great product managers know they don't have to be the source of all the ideas that come from anywhere in the world, all the employees of the company.

Sometimes. Customers can become the key because they know something you don't know.

"Procedural ape": Steve Jobs's products emphasize to bring their own design ideas and ideas to the user, not to consult their needs, although a lot of people disagree, but jobs is undoubtedly successful.

What do you think?

Marty Cagan:steve Jobs is famous for not asking clients what they should do. I agree with this point. Sometimes, our biggest misunderstanding is that customers can tell us what to do, but in fact they can't. Steve Jobs is clear about that.

But most people don't understand it enough. Think the main task is to ask the customer what should be done. Steve Jobs found two reasons for this: first, the customer didn't know what was possible, and second, the customer didn't know what they wanted. Until you see the product. So. You can't get what you do from your customers, and you have to show them the product before you collect feedback. That's why Steve Jobs is doing well. He was not afraid of being different because he knew what he could not get from his clients beforehand and what his opponents were doing-and he was concentrating on collecting information about users ' needs.

Create products that users love

"Procedural ape": what was the original purpose of your writing the book: Creating a user's favorite product?

Marty Cagan: The original purpose of my book is to share what I have learned.

I learned a lot in my previous work and I wanted to find a way to share it, so I thought I'd write it down after I left ebay. I originally shared it on my blog, but I learned that a lot of people are more willing to learn it through books.

So I share it with both books and blogs at the same time. I'm not trying to make money out of books, and it's not necessary to make money out of books, but it's really a great way to share.

I did not think that this book to China, translated the Chinese version number, so many people have never heard of my Chinese can enjoy. It's really a force.

Program Ape: In your opinion, how to build a user favorite products?

Marty Cagan: For this topic, I summarize 10 articles.

• Immerse yourself thoroughly in the user. Become an undisputed user expert. But do not blindly follow the user.
• Differentiate between visions and assumptions, and validate visions by communicating face-to-head with users. Meekness

• The premise of success is that you have to know: what problems to solve? For whom to solve? How to solve?
• Embracing the user experience, because the user experience is often more important and more difficult than development.

• High-speed filter dross, to remember: the core responsibility of product Department is to carry out product exploration.
• Ensure honest cooperation.
• High speed improvements. Continuously optimize the product in the direction of excellence.

• Agile, built and published incrementally and iteratively. It is important to ensure that the product is a trustworthy version number.

• The pursuit of excellence. Keep a high standard at the same time pay attention to every detail.
• Create, nurture and inspire a culture of innovation and optimize its organization and processes.

"Chinese style" product management

"Procedural ape": in your opinion. What is the status of product management in China? Please give some advice to the product managers in China.

Marty Cagan: China is too big. It is also very difficult for product managers to generalize the general statement. But basically there are two categories. A class of product managers who are already very much like Silicon Valley, they have very mature experience. There is also the same kind of thing that I met when I was working in Brazil, and I was still in the "What is the learning product" stage. As in emerging markets, product management in China and Brazil has not started long. So I suggest that a lot of the other is to focus on product management itself, should not define product managers as project managers. It is true that China has a huge number of excellent procedural apes. But weakness in product management is also an indisputable fact.

It is very much expected that Chinese product personnel can create many other great products for China, which will not only benefit China. will also benefit the world.

"Procedural ape": What is the trend of product management in your opinion?

Marty Cagan: In my opinion. There are three trends that will be prevalent in the world for a long time. The biggest trend should be lean startup (lean startup).

Lean startup is a very good idea. All the data also proves that it's really fast.

The second is the agile approach.

It's very strange. China's very many companies have not heard of agile, have heard of only simple learning, practical use of agile is less. This is not a good phenomenon. In my opinion, the next three years, agile will have a great impact on the world, the vast majority of team or program apes will use it. China should not be left behind in this respect.

The last trend is design, and it is time for Chinese technicians to take the design seriously.

Product expert Marty Cagan: Do not just encode the person