How to choose the product drive mode correctly

A while ago, wrote a "product manager model of the pros," the article stated the product manager's model, that is, "product managers to drive product team to do the product" issue, many people are discussing the article. In fact, this problem can be deeply understood, including: the Internet team in which way to make their products better? What types of functions are appropriate and what are the characteristics of the person driven? What mode should the Internet product team adopt and how can it be compatible with a variety of modes? There are also how to use the "product-type technology" personnel and so on.

Depending on the stage of the product, and the improved granularity and direction, the work of the Internet product team can be divided into functional improvements, non-functional improvements, and three types of new product incubation.

Functional improvements:

(1) Plagiarism and imitation: Internet product plagiarism and imitation is often criticized, but the particularity of China's Internet environment, has made them become the most important way of Chinese product improvement. Many Internet teams are as close as wolves to rivals and domestic and foreign colleagues, copy product model, rapid replication of new products, learn from the existing product improvement experience and ideas. Many successful cases have been raised;

(2) Product function "micro-innovation": that is, through the user needs and behavior of the in-depth understanding, without altering the overall thinking and positioning of the product under the premise of the initiative to create, improve the local function of products. "Micro-innovation" is also the main direction of improvement of China's Internet products, in order to make a small addition to each step to form a large bonus points, and at a certain point or several improvements to seize the user's pain point needs, so that the user experience to further improve. For example, 360 security guards, through the operation of simplifying the use of anti-virus software threshold greatly reduced, the successful conquest of China's complete Red Sea security software field, such as QQ through the expression, QQ show, friend impression and other functions to improve the overwhelming MSN, such as Baidu through direct optimization, Service introduction and other improvements make top words better than the technology-leading Google and so on;

"Non-functional Improvements":

(1) Improvements unrelated to functional requirements: such as product efficiency, fluency and stability, etc. They are not directly related to the needs of users, but will directly affect their satisfaction, is an essential part of the user experience, can be said to be the basis of product success. This kind of improvement, can be independent of the Product manager, the technical staff directly responsible;

(2) The effect of functional requirements improvement: for example, search engine sorting effect, advertising system, recommendation engine display effect and so on. They are directly related to the satisfaction of users ' needs and have always been a battleground. In the "Product Manager model of the harm", this kind of improvement is explained by the product manager is completely leading the problem.

"New Product Incubation":

(1) design of leading new products: such as Facebook,twitter. The emergence of these new products is related to the Internet user environment, but not directly related to technology. They tend to come from the founders ' fantastic ideas, from the deepening of a small idea. Many times, the derivative of this kind of product is not like a science, but more like art, there is no law to follow, only afterwards be put on "social network", "social media" and other hats;

(2) Technology-driven new products: such as the start-up search engine, recommendation system, popular current voice applications and so on. The idea of these products has long existed in science fiction, film, paper and prototype systems, but it has been waiting for the fundamentals to mature before reaching the application level. Here the "technology" is generalized, including theoretical methods and data;

Non-plagiarism "new product incubation" does not appear frequently, each occurrence will be a product of the waves, and even led to the industrial Revolution. As on the two categories, in fact, there is no complete boundary. The derivative of some of the new products itself incorporates design and technology drivers, such as Google glasses. New product hatching also has the following:

(3) Plagiarism of leading new products: In China's internet environment, the independent creation of new products is rare, more is to change some of the characteristics of replication, or the direct imitation of competitors;

So what are the participants in the Internet team? In general, the classic Internet team members through the division of functions, can be divided into product managers and technicians two categories, the former responsible for product design, the latter responsible for the implementation of functions. From the ability aspect, the product manager is closer to the user demand, has the socialization thinking, but the technical person is specialized in the project realization.

It is not difficult to conclude that product managers are suitable for driving a wide range of product functional improvements, including plagiarism and micro-innovation, as well as the plagiarism of dominant new product hatching. "Functional Requirements-independent improvements" can be independent of product manager functions. The "functional demand Effect improvement", the incubation of original new products, especially the technology-driven new product incubation, it is not suitable for the traditional product manager-led. These efforts must lead to both product and technology capabilities, the so-called "product-type technology." The technical background of the product manager is also more suitable to undertake these tasks, but once the function into the product manager, which means that the technical platform can not be contacted, can not see the original data, which will greatly reduce its initiative.

In the choice of product-driven mode, first of all, we must consider the characteristics of their own products, if the product improvement method covers only part of it, such as the technology is fully mature, or technology itself and product requirements fragmented, then the use of Product Manager model is completely no problem. If the personalized advertising system and other user needs to meet the situation can be CTR and other indicators to quantify the product, by the technical staff (researcher) led also no problem. But the search engine, the recommendation engine and so on products, not only contains the product functional improvement also contains the demand directly related effect improvement, in the pattern choice is not so simple, directly by the product manager to dominate, in many cases is not suitable.

The team division structure is either an or a choice, and in most cases it is more appropriate to be led by the product manager. But the engineer's push for the product layer often implies enormous power, so is it possible to be compatible with both modes? Personally, it is entirely possible. First of all, the need for a combination of technology and product capacity of the overall person responsible for the correct assessment of what kind of function-led more appropriate, and be able to co-ordinate the technical staff on product improvement ideas; second, the team to small, only small team, only enough flexibility, flexible deployment of the division of Labor, Also can make the technician produce the product level idea. Product managers and technicians should work together, understand each other, profoundly recognize their functions, abilities and characteristics, and in different situations, lead different directions of improvement.

Then, there is a question: "Product-oriented technical personnel" should be how to position, how to play their role? I have seen a lot of products with the dream of the technical staff, in the modern fine division of labor led to a large team of unhappy, even in order to achieve their own product dreams, transformation when the product And for a clear division of the large and medium-sized companies, this kind of two kinds of ability is indeed difficult to use good. On the other hand, I saw countless product improvement work and the incubation of new products, did not choose the product-driven model, or even because there is no "product-type technical personnel", the return of the request, directly lead to poor quality of products, delay, or even failure. This creates a pitiful contrast. The current "Big Data" era, in fact, is a data and theoretical methods to drive the mature era of technology, by engineers to drive product improvement will be more important, such people used at the right point, will play the role of the finishing touches, internet companies should pay more attention to such personnel. For "product-oriented technology" itself, but also to select a good function, leadership and team, not to give up their dreams.

Note: This article is the "architecture of the dispute, the system of Confusion" series of the third article, Welcome to Exchange!