Writing on the road to entrepreneurship: How to build a product from scratch

Original article transferred from blog Park http://kb.cnblogs.com/page/105820/

How to Control Products
-In the full process analysis of product management, I shared with you the "procedures and methods for implementing a product project standard in my mind". However, based on my personal experience, I found that there are macro routines and principles, lu Yi, the difference between ability and success or failure often lies in the "degree" of details and the "rhythm" on the whole ". "Build a product from scratchAndFrom having to optimizing a product", Although the routines are the same, they are completely different in controlling the macro execution pace. If you develop a new direction or product simply using the above method, the following problems may occur:

1. Not every company or project can perform requirement collection and project verification well.
2. If the direction is incorrect, it will not be found until later. It is too late.
3. The product is repeatedly polished within the team, so it cannot be put on the market, or even gets stuck in the wrong direction.
4. There is no clear line of life and death for the product. If the promotion is blocked, the team will be confused.

In fact, most small companies and some small projects rely solely on the experience and industry accumulation of the founder or project sponsor, or even intuition, to determine the direction. In this case, how can we use a routine to ensure the success rate of the project, detect the direction errors as soon as possible, and turn around as soon as possible? I drew a flowchart of my method and shared it with you:

A product has gone through the following major experiences:Project preparation, project planning, market verification, product release,Four stages:

I. Preparations for the project

Chinese people emphasize time, place, people and people. These three points are embodied in products, markets, resources, and teams.

1. Market: select target users, clarify the core needs of users, and the relationship between core needs and interests of users.

The main points of this phase are:

After the target user group is determined, it must be refined into specific business objectives based on the existing resource conditions, and there should be no general words like small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) after the 90 s, it should be very specific XXX company, customers in XXX bar, etc. The goal of this operation is to avoid the problem. The target group is selected correctly, but after the product is released, the target user cannot be reached.

After determining the core requirements, we must go into the relationship between the core requirements and the interests of users: what benefits can users gain after meeting the needs of users. The faster the user benefits are fulfilled, the more rigid the demand is.

2. Resources: Capital, qualifications, contacts, and industry Accumulation

View your resources based on the market :. Including funds, contacts, and industry qualifications, it would be better if there are exclusive or monopolistic resources. The purpose of clarifying these resources is to know the size of your mess and how long the project will last when developing a project plan.

3. Team: core member, technical founder, Team division of labor and benefit distribution

Finally, it is very important to find someone, especially the technical founders, sales and product managers. However, if there is no technical founders, the success rate of the project will be much lower.

The key points of this phase are: After finding people, we need to clarify the division of labor among individuals. The most important thing is to bind all the founders with the project interests, the issue of interest distribution for core personnel must be clarified before the game starts. Otherwise, it is highly likely to be split.

Since ancient times, most people and things can be done at the right time. If one person is missing, most people have worked hard and projects are the same. Therefore, my personal principle is:

• There are people in the market and there is no resource to do.
• If you have market resources, you cannot find the right person.
• If you have resources or no market, you don't have to think about it.

Ii. Determination of product plans and market plans

After resources are available, we need to plan the project. This stage mainly completes the following important tasks:

• Determine the core functions of the product based on your needs, and ensure that the core functions are feasible.
• Make market planning and assume that you have products, who will you sell to and how to sell them.
• Determine the project's life and death line, how long, how much resources are spent, and what conditions are met.

After clarifying this, you can start market verification.

Iii. Market Verification

I remember that when Lei Jun selected a startup team, there was a very important criterion: the product was verified on a small scale. This is very important.

Before a product's core functions are verified by the market, all user experience and R & D of non-core functions may become useless at the end. Many teams are eager to develop secondary functions, including official website, management background, and interface beautification, when their core features are not verified by the market. In this way, when you find that the core requirement is incorrect and you want to turn around, you find yourself in the dark.

Here we will share two major tasks completed in this phase:

1. Demon R & D:

Since it is a demo, don't worry about its ease of use, the appearance of the interface or some other auxiliary functions, as long as you have the most core functions, take the network phone as an example, you only need to use the original interface to develop a dial that can be used for phone calls, including volume adjustment, account logon, and account fee deduction. No development is required, including recharge and fee deduction information, call record query or something, you told the user, it's okay, I'll help you manually check it. The basic dialing call function + XXX minutes can be used directly for users.

2. Market verification of core functions:

Don't be afraid of poor products, and sell them to users with demon. It is not intended for users to think that this product is not exquisite, but how it is designed and easy to use,Instead, we will examine whether users need such a function and whether users can gain benefits by using such a feature to verify your original ideas.

If the user wants such a thing but finds it difficult to use it, and hopes to bring it back after improvement, congratulations, the product has been verified.

If the user doesn't want to know what it means and doesn't want to know, you have to think about whether you have found the wrong user or product positioning. If it is the latter, you have to make a decisive adjustment.

Of course, even if your demon is bad and the user is happy, congratulations, this is definitely a great blue ocean.

4. Release your own products

After completing the market verification, we basically have to wait. What we need to do is to convert the demo into a standardized product. At this stage, we mainly do the following three things.

1. Polish core functions to ensure the quality of core functions

The core functions of deom are usually only available. After the market verification is passed, we still need to focus on the core functions to form our core competitiveness through polishing the core functions: for example, when we make a XXX brand network call, our call quality is the best in China.

Here are some important points:

When polishing core functions, we must not excessively pursue the perfection of functions, but grasp the critical value of user requirements. Similarly, taking the call quality as an example, the core requirements of users are:"Successful call completion ":When the call quality is clear and stable enough to meet the user's call needs, the quality of the audio is MP3 or CD audio quality, and the user is not very concerned about it, and if the pursuit of perfection is excessive, we may waste a lot of energy and money here, because according to the 20% principle, we may pay 80% of the money to improve the quality of the last calls. The most sad thing is that, users do not care about or even notice the difference, so you know.

2. Build practical auxiliary functions

After the core needs of users are met, we need to develop a series of auxiliary functions to allow users to better use the core functions. This is very important. Do not pursue some cool things. When you add a new feature, ask yourself, does this help your core needs? If no, do not add it.

Here is a method:Circle the circle with "core functions" and "secondary strength for core functions" as the radius, and then implement functions corresponding to each circle from the inside out starting from the center.

I will share two more theories: Available-> easy to use, as well as the famous Maslow's demand theory.

3. Improved efficiency and user experience

The biggest difference between Mercedes-Benz and Alto lies in the difference in performance and details. The product corresponds to the efficiency and user experience of various functional points, and the efficiency is to be addressed one by the technical director, the user experience is controlled by the product manager and the UED group.

Here we will not talk about these two points. I will talk about n more in depth, but not in depth.

Conclusion

Without knowing it, half a year has passed, and millions of dollars have been burned out, and it is still going on. The team paid for their youth and lack of experience ...... Looking back on the various issues that have occurred over the past six months, I personally think the problems are mainly focused on the following aspects. Now I will share them with you, hoping to help those who are on the road to entrepreneurship.

1. Product and business models are not verified in a small scale.
2. Core members are not well motivated and constrained.
3. The target user group is not refined into specific business goals.
4. Without realizing the importance of business resources, no one can eat some cakes.
5. After achieving some achievements, the mood is too high, and the circumstances of perfectionist and idealistic are serious.
6. You must maintain high requirements for yourself and never slack yourself.
7. In addition, it is inconvenient to publish the information in the public, so we will not share the information, mainly about industry resources and industry experience.