Top error for 10 product managers

"7 elder brother Guide" to do a product manager is really not easy, because product managers are often prone to make mistakes. This article describes in detail the top ten most common mistakes that product managers make. I would like to product managers, technical leaders, entrepreneurs, can provide reference.

Author: No strokes, Ghost foot seven. No recruit is a Amoy network of senior product experts, he has a wealth of e-commerce, data mining, Internet products are rich experience; and ghost Foot seven have been responsible for large Taobao search products, and product design and product management have their own thinking.

Description: This article starts in the World Network business, please all reprint indicated is originates from the world net merchant.

Product managers need to create products. God can also be a product manager because he created the product.

To be a successful product is very difficult, in addition to the resources, timing and other issues, a greater factor in the product manager himself. A good product manager can coordinate resources and seize the opportunity. But product managers often make mistakes themselves. Always wanted to write an article about product managers easy to make mistakes, but worry about their products in the experience is not enough, the delay did not pen.

Recently looked at the previous record, found that a very senior product expert Marty Cagan raised a similar point of view. Marty Cagan has been a vice president of Netscape, a senior vice president for ebay products, and has a wealth of product design and product management experience. No recruit also participated in Marty Cagan product training, so I and no recruit, to Marty Cagan summary as the basis, coupled with our understanding of product design, sorted out this article, to share with you.

1 confuse user requirements with product requirements

Most of the product manager's workflow is: Collect the user needs, start to write product requirements documents, and then to the technical staff development, followed by the project progress, coordination of resources, acceptance results, the final release of products.

The whole process is not wrong, it is easy to produce the wrong place, the product requirements how to determine. Taobao internal product manager is also so, often the operation of the needs of students directly translated into documents, to the technical staff development. The end result is more and more functional points of products, more and more complex products, become a hodgepodge.

Must consider the demand from the product design angle, transforms the user's demand into the product demand. When the train didn't show up, you asked what the user wanted most? The user would say, I want a horse that runs faster. The needs of the user seem to be a good horse, but in effect the demand for products is that it requires faster traffic speed.

User demand is a problem raised, product demand is a feasible solution to this problem. So when the user needs are expressed as a solution, we need to explore the hidden problems behind it. The better way to solve the problem is to strengthen the feasibility analysis and demand review.

2 confuse the boss's needs with the demand of the product

This may be a lot of product managers in the heart of pain, for most of the PD Taobao should have met the size of the boss to come up with demand, even if the obvious unreliable demand, it is not good to refute, can only arrange development.

The boss has the vision of the boss, the information and experience he enjoys, and his rights. Boss's demand must listen to, the boss is also one of the users, his demand is also user needs, just don't listen to directly as a product demand.

For the boss's needs, but also to strengthen the need for retrospective. From the boss here deep understanding of where his needs come from, is based on what kind of scenarios and what kind of users, there are no concrete examples.

Most of the boss's demand is reasonable, but the priority is not so high. We can use delaying tactics to deal with:

Boss Ah, your demand is very reasonable, and quite in place, I plan in the next version of a good plan, this version of the function point has been more, the developer is too little, ah, boss, can you help me get more than two development engineers ...

When the next version, the boss often forget his needs. If he remembers, help him to achieve a part of the function well, face or to give.

3 confuse invention (invention) with Creation (innovation)

This is often a problem for innovative product managers. In particular, the experience is shallow, there is a strong sense of mission product experience will often be an idea, a mission directly as an innovation to carry out.

The invention is in the laboratory, and the creation is applied in the industry. The laboratory Dongdong is a new thing, but the prerequisite is limited, and in commercial verification, marketing, scale and so on will not think too clearly in advance.

Creation is an industry-level change, can be commercialized, can feed the team, can scale, can truly reach the user and let the user accept.

The most unacceptable is that for a new product, the future is very good, did a long time planning and design, put a lot of engineers to develop, after six months to come out with a lot of defective products, also can not be pushed to the market, and the market has produced some changes, but also to change the demand for products, but also to improve the previous products. This product will die in the end.

Should focus on the smallest core issues, solve the core problems, complete small and beautiful functions, and then quickly iterate, the user first. Be able to feed the team and give the team members a good day. Otherwise, even if the company Non-stop project, the team will morale.

4 Replace the needs of users with their own needs

Most product managers, communication skills are stronger, but also more powerful. When the product manager is anxious, or can not find the target users, too ahead of time, easily yy out some product requirements. They do not find the target users to verify the core issues and solutions, to the natural idea of describing the product story (user scenarios and user issues).

Many people emphasize the importance of data, but also easy to let product managers ignore customers, because they look at the data every day, they replace the customer. I am in charge of search products, often with the search product manager, to the user as a person, do not look as data. Data is important, but data tends to obscure user-friendly needs.

Product managers should learn to listen to different viewpoints and communicate with those who dare to criticize their opinions. Whether small users or large users of the product, we must take time to understand the needs and feelings of real users, even if it is to chat with them, we will be able to find some previous ideas different conclusions.

5 "Create the right product" as "Create the right product"

This is the truth of "doing the right thing" and doing what is right. A lot of people are used to being arranged and doing things according to the process, and don't want to know why they do it or if they really do it.

Product Manager is also easy to do, to a post, received a task to complete a function, and then follow the process to do, and finally this product is very perfect, but basically no one to use. This problem is more likely to occur in large companies and rigorous companies. In particular, the segmentation work, platform for the operation of the running environment, product managers easily become a rule of the executor.

For example, if the product manager is tasked with designing a website to advertise the company's technology brand. The most common practice of product managers is to design the various modules of the site, content, and even design a forum to form documents, and then hand in and develop. Things done, this site is done, but found no traffic, completely did not promote the company's technology brand role. What should be the correct approach to this example? You can think for yourself.

We should encourage product managers to achieve their dreams, but also to consider the team vertical, on the one hand can improve efficiency, on the other hand can avoid many mistakes.

6 "Add functionality" as "product improvement"

Any product needs to constantly add new features, on the one hand to meet more user needs, on the other hand to adapt to the changes in the environment. Product managers often add functionality as a product improvement, this phenomenon in a mature products in the team will be more obvious, existing ideas and evaluation indicators often caused is constantly homogenization, and constantly add nice to have function.

But adding functionality is not necessarily a product improvement. How do you determine if it is "product improvement"? It is important to determine the measurement of a reasonable product.

An unreasonable product measurement index, it is easy to bring negative effects on the product. Taobao has a lot of such examples, Non-stop introduction of sweeping products, turnover rate and bring the overall turnover to measure the success of the new function. Sina Weibo also has similar functions, for background pictures and templates, gifts and games gifts, recommended activities, and so on, the internal should be how many users to participate as a measure of indicators.

If Taobao search takes the search conversion rate as a metric, the end result is very easy to create low prices and the prevalence of the explosion; Sina Weibo takes the user participation as the measure index, will appear everywhere is the recommendation Attention function module, lets the user be apt to dislike; Dangdang did one thing last year, encouraging users to book reviews, The interior should be a measure of how many people participated in the evaluation, resulting in a large number of spam comments, so that particularly good reviews have been drowned out.

If we want to solve this problem, we need to really consider the problem from the user's point of view, and make a reasonable measurement index. Some metrics are mutually restrictive, such as a Gini coefficient in the measure of Taobao's search to ensure that the flow distribution is not too concentrated. How to develop a reasonable measurement index, different business will be very dissimilar, need comprehensive thinking.

7 can not distinguish between "exciting" and "have a good" function.

This error is somewhat similar to the 6th error.

The development of wireless internet, so that users are more and more picky about products, without some "exciting" features, it is easy to let users forget this product. But product managers often spend too much effort to create something that is "nice".

If the user of a product reaches hundreds of thousands of, any one function, can satisfy a part of user's demand, also have some users in use. Similar functional requirements will never be completed, continue, will make the product more and more complex. Micro-letters have been a good example of this. Micro-letter is the largest function of communication, although micro-letter can do a lot of things, including the media, friends, etc., but the main line of micro-letter products or communication, the function of communication to do very convenient, to speak the function of the design is an exciting function. Micro-letters have also done some good functions, such as: voice reminders. It looks good, but there aren't many people.

Resources are always limited, product managers should focus on the main path, and constantly ask themselves is the product of the typical users, whether the user really like the need for this function is really urgent? Designing an exciting feature is far more important than providing 10 features that are also good.

8 The pursuit of impressive demand documents, not the pursuit of moving products

Writing a good PRD (product requirements Document) is really important, because you can help the product manager to clarify the ideas, but also let the technical staff know the product design details. But I used to be in the technology, to PRD see not too carefully, not clear place will go to a closer look, as we usually treat electrical specifications. In addition, PRD, the target users can not really perceive the design of the product.

So to write PRD, should be enough. The best way is to communicate effectively with the technical and design staff, before the implementation of the product, the full dynamic high-fidelity prototype to obtain the user's approval, perception of the user's voice. Pure algorithmic products or data mining products may be difficult at this point, you can use real data analysis to express this kind of product design.

9 The product release as a success

The mistake is not just for the product manager, but for many companies. In some large companies, the release of a small product, and even released a small feature, there will be thousands of words of zhongdi Mail. This kind of mail is very inspiring, but it's just not a product success.

A seemingly simple truth, but not so easy to do. Many product managers are eager to release their products, resulting in a very bad product experience, even if the subsequent rapid improvement, it is difficult to restore the loss of users and Word-of-mouth. Now there are a lot of products are starting to implement the invitation test mode. For example, micro-letter 5.0 Beta, micro-letter Public Account menu function, micro-blog Media account test, micro-amoy invitation test participation, Taobao search on the line many functions, but also with 5% of the flow of first Test. These practices are designed to avoid the risk of releasing products or functions.

Product release, means that users are really starting to use, success is not to see whether the product is released, but to see whether the user really like. To achieve the user really like, product release is just the beginning.

10 into the "Feeding beast" model

What is wild animal feeding? The beast never eats enough, and needs to keep feeding. A product manager, sometimes not thinking about what to do, but need to give their corresponding technical team has enough work, so have to find a bunch of small functions, let them to develop.

Many companies have similar situations and often hear from technicians or designers that: you work here less, you work here there is no fresh to learn things, I do not have a sense of achievement, my promotion will be affected, I will go to big projects ... at this point, if the product manager needs to secure these resources, it must provide a sufficient number of Large enough demand, let the corresponding team to develop, constantly give the demand to the development and design of the belly feed. What is the need is not important, it is important that the resources to support this product will not be taken away by other products.

The downside is obvious, not just wasting the company's resources, but more importantly, making the whole product illogical, bloated, and ultimately either a mediocre product or a big subtraction operation. But a product is easy to do addition, it is very difficult to do subtraction. Any subtraction can impair the use of a subset of users.

This error arises, sometimes unconsciously, even when we are unaware of it. To avoid this error, on the one hand, we need to give the company a reasonable time to cultivate products, but also give the product manager enough trust, product managers should also have enough self-reflection; On the other hand, consider the vertical team, so that technicians and product personnel together, either wonderful together, or lonely together.

Above 10 top errors, is Marty Cagan according to his more than 10 years of product management experience summed up, the development of Internet products is worth reference. In particular, some of the large internet companies, there are many product lines, the division of Technology more and more fine, similar errors are more and more. Marty Cagan The original text of the product design of the top ten top mistakes, this article changed into a product manager, will be suitable for some of the national conditions.

Of course, different people summed up the top ten top mistakes may not be the same, if let me summarize, there may be some other mistakes. The errors mentioned in this article are not applicable to all companies, if you are interested in product design, or you are a product manager, you can collect this article, every once in a while to see if you have made the same mistake.

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"7 Brother Chat"

1 There are many microblogging friends are not accustomed to receive my hair letters, I finally explained. This is the microblogging media public account, can give attention to my account of the fans to push a text article every day, similar to the use of micro-letters to pay attention to public accounts. The advantage of this is that you can receive my daily collation of the classic articles, do not worry about missing, but also easy to view on the computer.

Still some friends pay attention to ghost foot seven, but did not receive letters article, very anxious. It is estimated that micro-blog bugs, you can also visit my microblog homepage, which has "article" a column, all of my articles push will be there. This function of micro Bo is stable, it should be OK.

2 Yesterday I did not give Weibo friends pushed articles, just to micro-letter friends pushed "7 elder brother Chat", resulting in a number of micro-blog friends said I favoritism. In fact, for me, micro-bo micro-letter is the same, but the micro-trust friends have been concerned about "ghost foot seven" for some time, they are accustomed to see a little bit of my article every day, no matter what the content. But the friends on Weibo are not accustomed to, there is no good content, I do not dare to push to give you. I'll try to stay in line.

3 has been thinking about the word "product" Recently, all things can be done as a product, including a person. Everyone is a product manager, at least you are designing yourself. I wish I could write an article and live like a product. The main point of view is that, as a large product, has the core value, there are user needs, there are continuous upgrades and add new features, but also to do product transformation .... At the same time, many things in life can also be done with product ideas. Wow, this article is going to be fun.

4 Chat Less today, because today to open a new column, 7 elder brother recommended. On the one hand to help solve the company's difficult problem, on the other hand can help to solve some of the employment problems of university students. This weekly recommendation of several companies, although the amount of solution is limited, but I can do a little bit of effort is to solve the problem. I believe more people will join in to solve this problem.

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"7 Brother recommended"

From this week onwards, "7 elder brother recommended" column is officially opened, this column is used to help some electric companies do recruitment information release. Recommend two companies each time, not every day, I will also do some background understanding.

1 Beijing Tian Chi Network.

The company has exclusive product channels, front-line star resources, the depth of the industry background of the electric business operators. 7 brother to their company also understand, they are committed to creating a professional star electric platform. Now Taobao on some "star Shop" (Star on Taobao open shop) is they are responsible for the operation. Recruitment positions: Senior operation, senior design and copy planning. Work location: Beijing. Contact: i9tianhr@163.com

Good morning, 2 antelope.

This is the first shop Taobao scarf, double crown, the main products are scarf scarves, 3 consecutive years of sales of Taobao apparel accessories category First, the 2012 "Top Ten Network Business" one. Their company is interesting, known as the Sheep village, everyone also has nickname: Lazy goat, pleasant goat ... recruitment positions: Graphic design, art and through train commissioner. Work location: Anhui Hefei. Contact: lingyang_hr@163.com

Click on the last link of the article to view the details and position requirements of both companies. If you also want to be recommended, please send the company recruitment information to guijiaoqi-open@qq.com. The company that I recommended recently, is the electric company that needs to provide the employment or the internship position that receives the fresh University graduate.