Take stock of the mistakes that the product managers often make at the beginning

In recent times, it is clear that product managers can be said to be one of the hottest jobs in the domestic internet industry. So it seems that overnight, the title of the people who almost doubled, and those who originally do marketing planning, operation of the people also call themselves product managers. What's more, there are many computer-related majors who want to be a product manager after they graduate, but a lot of people do know very little about the job responsibilities and ability requirements of this position. In addition to the overall heating up of the internet industry, the work of the mature brought about by the breakdown in fact, there are some information asymmetry caused. Because in their view, the product manager does not need to write the code, do the design, just write a document, on one side, and the title there is "manager" two words, printed on the business card and say it is also a face.

In fact, the real product manager is not a low threshold position. What it requires is a product that can truly responsible people, not only the upfront needs research and analysis, medium-term product planning and design, but also the later data analysis and product operations and iterations. In terms of the breadth of the work, the product manager's ability requirements are much higher than those of research and development engineers and designers. In many internet companies, such a role in the company's product decision-making and management has a significant impact on the actual role of the work is closer to product designers, that is, the emphasis on prototyping, interactive design, which to some extent to promote the "everyone is a product manager" illusion.

The Internet Product Manager not only has a wide range of work, but also a broad knowledge of the position. Some internet companies, in the recruitment of product managers, in addition to the basic expression and writing skills, but also focus on candidates in the design, psychology, sociology, history and marketing and other aspects of the ability.

"Do products" is a perceptual and rational process, there are many predecessors of the experience of peer inheritance and guidance, there are a variety of product managers for the conference and training, but it is inevitable to make some mistakes. Some are the result of inexperience, while others are the product manager's lack of understanding of "human nature".

From my own point of view, did nearly three years of Internet products, did make some mistakes, there are big and small, the truth is interlinked, summary records let people grow.

1, not thinking clearly

I do not know since when, Internet products began to popular a "world martial arts, but fast not broken" argument. This is misleading a lot of people, it seems as long as there is an idea should immediately do, while doing side change. In fact, the vast majority of failed products, the problem is not to think clearly, such as uncertainty about the needs of users, or to achieve half of the need for the structure or requirements change, reverse again. In order to fast and make the demand only to do half, this with "foolish, lost Watermelon" no two.

The homogeneity of Internet products is becoming more and more serious, it makes no sense to repeat the wheel. Mobile Private Social application path 2.0 online after the domestic emergence of a swarm of plagiarism, in fact, there are 1:1 of the copy. I think the vast majority of copycat do not think clearly one thing: in the domestic networking products, how to get rid of the shadow of Tencent? It's not that as long as Tencent is doing things that no other team can do, but specifically to this point, the other teams do not have any advantage, the beautiful UI can not solve more problems.

The basic starting point for product managers should be to "get things right" rather than "drive out". This requires the upfront spending some time on demand research, think clearly again, this also prevents the late frequent demand change. In the Book of Revelation: Creating users ' favorite products, author Marty Cagan The importance of adequate demand research in particular.

2, want to do more

In the case of Weibo products, Weibo solves the need for a fragmented expression of what the user "is doing". And from small language teachers to teach us, a story of the three elements, should be "people, time and place." In the 3rd quarter of 2010, we wanted to address the need for users to "where I am" at the same time, that is, to post tweets with location information and hopefully make a difference to competitors.

In hindsight, even if the feature was launched a year earlier than Sina and Tencent Weibo, it was still a typical, untested, product manager's own imaginary demand. Micro Bo Existing use of the scene and process, and sign-sharing is irrelevant, and micro-Bo in the user relationship is half-baked, to such a group of people to share their geographical location, motivation is not enough. The results were obvious, with projects that had been done for nearly a quarter, with mediocre data, called failure. The bigger stealth problem is that once the product is online, it requires greater determination. This not only increases the complexity of the user's use of the product, but also brings huge maintenance costs that are unavoidable.

It is easy to add, but to control the desire to "do nothing" more difficult, but also more important, product managers need to do the courage and determination to do subtraction. When you encounter the "can add can not add" function, back to the original point of rethinking, if not add this function will have any loss? Is this thing on the long-term route of the product?

3. Ignore Usability testing

As the basic threshold of work, most product managers are "super users" of products. But product managers cannot speak for themselves on behalf of all users, and in many cases the product's target user base, user scenario, and requirements are diverse and complex.

Therefore, it is necessary to start doing usability testing as early as possible, and users will definitely respond positively. Do not because there is no eye movement does not do user observation, and not because there is no user researcher does not do the research analysis. As a product manager, a little less sentimental, more than a piece of hard work, simple prototype sketch, and directly to find a few friends around can start. In fact, in usability testing for Web sites, 85% of usability problems are generally found for 5 people. Especially in product positioning, product architecture, and so on, and the target user chat communication will have an unexpected harvest.

4. Ignore the risks and costs of innovation

As an example, the comments and forwarding function determines the information circulation and consumption pattern of the whole community, and it is precisely because of the short, flat and fast characteristics of Weibo information that the core advantages of Weibo are established in relation to other product forms.

For microblogging, the market competition of the mass products, on the comments, forwarding capabilities, competitors often have a relatively mature solution, these solutions have been authenticated by the user. The more basic the function, the greater the cost and risk of innovation, and the higher the ability requirements for the product team.

On this issue, NetEase Weibo has been a few times on the forwarding and review of the revision, the negative effect is also very large, core users and the loss of a lot of abuse. After a few toss, now the online solution is still copied the Sina Weibo model, which is the most insurance and the most conservative approach. and several revisions to the team and users of the loss is more difficult to recover.

Of course, I'm not saying that product managers should not try to innovate, but to see how the "innovation" is at the level of the entire product, and what it requires for resources and team capabilities. This "innovation" tends to be more powerful if it is repositioning the product, serving another user base or solving a problem in a different scenario.

5. Details determine success or failure

In China's Internet market, the vast majority of products have a large number of competitors eyeing. On the premise that the product is in the right direction, the simplest and most basic product version is fast on line, and keeping an iterative trot is more important than anything. Do not believe that "the details determine success or failure", but believe that "strategic decision fate." Product managers should not be overly thoughtful and perfect, focus on possible positive events, rather than focusing too much on the negative events that are unlikely to happen.

In the microblog project, I spent a lot of time on interactive effects in the early days, for example, switching the page to the most dazzling Ajax, the new and old micro-blog content between the split line repeatedly carved, display micro-blog release time of the copy repeatedly modified and so on, and did not spend more time on user communication interviews, demand analysis and product discussions. Looking at the data afterwards, I found that the details of the "user experience", which I thought would affect the "UX", were very few users would notice, a waste of resources and energy.

6. Misreading data

Data is an objective reflection of the performance of a product, which provides a window for finding and optimizing problems. For any product that comes online for several months, product managers can find a lot of data to use. And in "How to look at the data" in this matter, the product manager is very easy to choose the data according to their own presets, which leads to the view of the data one-sided and distorted situation, can not really reflect the full picture of the product.

In 2005, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in his letter to shareholders that data is based on past recursive presentation and cannot bring direct value to future innovation. However, it can not be overlooked that, through detailed data analysis, product managers may find some new demand points.

It is noteworthy that even in the early stage of product design, the product itself is limited or even empty data, product managers can make full use of search engines, other data platforms to obtain the desired external data. You don't have to stop because there's no data. The only question is, what do you want to get out of that data?

7. Copy Experience

Many product managers will have their own ideas after experiencing one or two of product designs. The next time you encounter similar functions, you will habitually copy experience. But each product user needs, the use of the scene are changing at all times, even if it is their own summary of experience, another item can not be used directly. Still have to undergo careful analysis, put things on the entire product plate, get out of the objective look.

In fact, only a very few people can summarize the experience of work into their own methodology, and constantly improve the saturation. Through communication with others, their own adherence to record and summary, can continue to consolidate their own methodology.

Not all of the above is written, looking back, there are some things that may not be able to do the right thing even if you start from scratch. In a specific time and space, product managers, the rational and perceptual role of the work, will always face all kinds of difficulties, completely eliminate errors and impossible. In a sense, product managers only have to accumulate methodologies, avoid repetitive mistakes, and put things in the context of repeated consideration and thinking, in order to make as close as possible to the right decision.