The core skills of seven excellent product managers

In my previous job, I used to have a core competency model for Product manager positions, and when I saw Michael's article, I felt very much like my thinking, so I tried to share it with you.

1, communication skills

A good product manager is definitely a successful communicator, and communication skills include verbal and written communication skills. The main role of the Product manager itself is to be the center of communication.

The ability of the product manager to communicate is not only reflected in the effective communication with people of different jobs, but also in the following aspects:

When the product manager communicates with people of different personalities. For example, most engineers have a more introverted personality, while most sales and marketing personnel are outgoing

Use different "languages" when communicating with people from different jobs. If you want to communicate effectively, it is important to communicate with the object of concern and easy to understand the "language." For example, when communicating with marketers and communicating with engineers, there are different ways to communicate: too many things like "database Performance" and "Memory management algorithms" are too much for marketers to worry about, and too much conceptualization of the engineers ' conversations does not help them design real implementation details; When communicating with bosses, you should focus more on the higher levels and avoid too much detail.

2. Non-authorized leadership

A successful product manager is a good leader, even without a clear mandate.

Product managers often need to perform leadership tasks in a number of areas, including leading the project team, leading the product strategy and blueprint designation, and leading cross-functional product activities. But in most cases, product managers usually do not have formal authorization from the company. At this point, whether the "unauthorized leadership" is the key to success or not.

How to lead a team without authorization, my advice is – to use influence, negotiation, interpersonal and other similar skills.

3. Learning Ability

The IT industry is a rapidly changing industry, "unchanged perhaps only change", new technologies continue to emerge, today's new products in a few months will become Huo, or even faster. Good product managers must be able to learn quickly, even in relatively new areas. With this ability, it is relatively easy to manage products in changing market and technology trends. Many companies make a mistake in recruiting product managers – they are too fancy for experience. For example, if a company is going to do security software, they will return to the job description "need more than 5 years of working experience in the Security software field". This is actually the wrong approach, and a better approach is to find a product manager with experience in the software field and be good at fast learning.

4. Business Sensitivity

Excellent product managers have a great sense of business, they know how to identify market opportunities, understand the importance of competitive differentiation, and can offer winning product strategies, pricing, promotional strategies, collaborative programs, and breakeven analysis.

See these, don't think the product manager should be an MBA graduate. In fact, most good product managers don't have an MBA, but they are very sensitive to business.

5, love the product

Excellent product managers have a heartfelt love for their products. They tirelessly try a variety of new products, register a variety of product beta, download the trial version of the product and carefully think about it, a time to go online to see all kinds of new products Web site. They love the design of good products, even if they are not their own company, they despise those products, even if it is developed by their own company. Most importantly, they are obsessed with creating good products – whether it's a new product or a product improvement.

6, attention to detail, the pursuit of perfection

Excellent product managers to the details of the pursuit of detail is the development of excellent products, the most important prerequisite, is the so-called "details determine success or failure." Steve Jobs once said:

Good product managers not only focus on the details of product design, but also pursue perfection in other things, such as competitive analysis, project planning, and all other responsibilities.

7. Daily Product Management Ability

Excellent product manager with good day-to-day product management capabilities, including:

Write market demand documentation (MRD) and Product requirements documentation (PRD)

Analysis of competitive situation

Planning Product Roadmap

Product presentation ppt

Designing the User interface

Analyze product data, etc.

These core competencies not only contribute to product managers ' self-improvement, but also have reference value for recruiting product managers.

If you have any additional responsibilities for the Product manager, you are welcome to write to me or to comment on the comments.