What exactly is a product manager?

I am often asked what a product manager is. What do they do? Where do they come from? Why do they like geek geeks so much?

Marty Cagan the product manager in his book called Insiped: to discover a valuable, useful and viable product. Similarly, I often define product managers as the intersection of business, technology, and user experience. (Hint: perhaps only product managers themselves will be able to draw themselves into the Wayne Chart ^_^). In these three areas, a good product manager should have at least one of the most experienced, and he needs to be enthusiastic about all of them and be familiar with all the relevant practitioners.

business--Product Manager In the final analysis is a business position, he focused on product value maximization. In order to achieve business goals and maximize return on investment, product managers often have a passion for how to tap their product value. Sorry, it means you are a coat, but you don't need to wear it.

technology--If you don't know how to make a product, you never know what to do. Of course, this is not to say that product managers are going to sit down and learn to program, but that they have some knowledge of technology products and, above all, understand the impact of this commitment, which is critical to making the right business decisions. In this age of flexibility, product managers spend more time with the development team than with anyone else in the business.

User experience--The final point is that the product manager is the user's voice in the business world, and he must be enthusiastic about the user experience. Also this is not to ask you to do a picture processing master, but you need to constantly test the product, and users to communicate and get feedback (especially at the beginning of the product development).

To find a valuable, useful and viable product. --marty Cagan

What do you manage?

Why do you need such a wide technical side? Because the character is incredibly broad and diverse, and you need to use a variety of skills at any time.

First of all, you have to have a positioning of your product, which requires a lot of research, survey your market, survey your customers, and even some problems to be solved. You need to consolidate a lot of data-from customer feedback, internet research and analysis, research reports, market trends and statistics-you need to know anything about your product market and customers, and then use that information to make a good chemical reaction to your product and set a goal strategy.

When you have a location, you have to advertise. Then start looking forward to your utopia (your product). If you can't be passionate about it-either that you're not fit for the job or that you're not making a reasonable strategy for the product. The success of your product depends on each team member-from the salesperson to the development team-everyone understands and loves the product.

Then you can change gears again to make a flexible plan to achieve the desired goal. Have a roadmap for product optimization improvements that will give you a step-by-step plan to achieve your goals. This is probably the old-fashioned time that hard work will eventually be rewarded, and your team is working harder to design, program, and help customers solve problems.

Now you can adjust the final details, as you and the development team work day after day, and constantly guide the product to the right route, to solve the new emerging problems, tightly grasp the management standards, your products will be able to be on time on line.

Products are finally on the market, but you suddenly find that you have to spend a few days to deal with the data-to observe how customers use the product, outside will often talk to them about the product, and even you find in your daily necessities are also filled with the topic of the product. Did you solve the right problem? Does your user agree with this product? Will they make a purse out of this product?

Then you have to keep repeating the process. These days are not just like waterfalls. Follow the flow, you have to do research for a part of the product or the characteristics of it, in a blink of an eye to achieve from strategy to tactical change.

Sounds hard?

Of course it's a chore but you can get a lot of fun without doing it-it's definitely a good paycheck and a fun day. You try to reach out and develop a product from the bottom, and help solve the customer's problem, and play an indispensable role on the road of business success. We are the heroes of the Science and technology world, but have never been sung. At least we can think about it ourselves ...

Thinking about Google over the past week, I've been stuck in a typical hesitant procrastination habit, often typing words "what" or "what" or "white Horse" goes into the Google search box at the top right of my computer screen. These hints are omnipotent engines that need to tell me the most pressing desires of the current real-time ranking of the top 10 virtual worlds. When typing, this list reads in descending order:

What is the fiscal cliff
What is my IP
What Obamacare?
What is Love?
What is gluten
What is Instagram?
What does YOLO mean?
What is light?
What is a good credit score
What's lupus?

This is a list of concerns, not the least important method, that makes us uneasy about using our money, our bodies and our technology – paranoia and almost the same degree of confusion. A Prince Charles is as eager as the definition of love, after I repeat the experience of the last few days, it always seems to be in number 4th in this list of priorities, although it is above and below the top priority, it tends to slightly shift the message.

The list also supports another truth: we – the collective questioning mind of billions of components – have become accustomed to asking Google quite a lot of things, and it points us to some kind of satisfying response. It has long been the knowledge of most of us, and perhaps even desperately, the wisdom of the place. And now it is almost unthinkable to imagine that we may have found the answer to some of these problems only 15 years ago without it – did you visit the library? Doctor？ Citizen consultation? Shrinking?

This is the time, in about 1995 years, when our idea of "searching" still carries the Radingen sense of the word – a search for prehistoric history is a sort of "arduous task" that must involve "wandering" and "begging" and "crossing". Not anymore. For those in the process of growing up, search in this millennium, it does not mean more taxes, instead of typing two words into a box – or, more and more muttering to the phone – waiting less than a full answer instantly, generally involving text and images and movies, books and maps. The search for the meaning of the quest has already adopted other former Google concepts, such as "Lost" way.

The rate of change-how we collect information, how to connect, and think-has been so fast that it invites a more pressing Google question. Where would you like to search? The answer to one of the answers to Sergey (Sergey Brin) and Larry Page, Google's founder, billionaire duo in 2004, provided them with a vision of the future pressed by the former Newsweek journalist Stephen Stamp.

"The search will be included in the human brain," Page said of their ambitions. "When you think about something and don't really understand it, you will automatically get information." ”

"It's true," Brin said. "Ultimately, I think Google's way to increase your brain and knowledge of the world." Now, you go into your computer, type a phrase, but you can imagine that it can be easier in the future, you can have talking equipment or you can have a computer, notice what's going on around them ...

Page, the general defiant thinker, with a resolute attitude, though. "Eventually you will have implants, if you think about the facts, it just tells you the answer." ”

For more than 9 years, Brin's vision has been, at least, a reality. In the past couple of years, a great advance in speech recognition technology has allowed you to talk to search apps-especially on the iphone's Siri, as well as Google's jelly beans-while Google Now, won the 2012 innovation year, will tell you what you want to know-traffic conditions, your team football scores, Weather-Before you ask, according to your location and search history. The page's brain implants keep some way further off, although both Google founders have recently been wearing "Google Glass" prototypes, headscarves, items on a permanent screen on your edge, with apps-cameras, search, any-account for voice start commands. Search for ever more closely related thoughts.

In California State's Mountain View, outside Google's headquarters. Image source: Donnald Weber Observation

In this sense, this man who, these days, is responsible for most of the world's questioning and wandering, seeking and traversing is called Amit Amit. The 44-year-old Google search, head, he is a boyish passion exists, who inhabits a very mythologised office in California State Mountain View, a Little Wizard of Oz way to live at one end of the yellow Brick road. Amit is the person who pulls the lever that may just help you find the heart, brain, or back to Kansas. In more than 10 years, he has taken over responsibility to write and refine fortified algorithms from Brin – more than 200 different coding equations – and Google's power of endless trawl answers through almost all the historical records of knowledge. So far he has never stopped looking for ways to make ever smarter and quicker.

In order to find Amit, I went through the second nature travel preparation. My Google hotel stays in the vicinity of Palo Alto, viewing options, and there is a couple in a virtual look around four weeks before booking. I'm at Google my flight time, check in. I Google a car rental company and found the cheapest one to compare, pick a car and connect to the Google Maps program on the route 400 miles around and I drive to Los Angeles north. Where I parked my car in Googleplex, Google info and Google Street View, I would walk away from the car to the right office building, a copy of the past PayPal outside the Tyrannosaurus rex. I google in the last few interviews Amit. And then a day or two later, I did all this for real.

There are some disturbing kings view of the Google headquarters itself, and I would like to have a lot of things to do to find myself in the physical space of virtual entities. At the end of last year, Google unveiled its huge and growing data center for the first time in photos. We know the image of the cloud, whether it's inspiring or scary, depending on your point of view. Endless servers, connecting with primary colors of Google wiring, stretching banks as far as the eye can imagine, a great outsourcing brain muffled in Oklahoma, Ohio and Georgia State, fed in high security, hangar, all over the world with anxiety and curiosity. The unprecedented storage center of the control center is simply more open, however.

You can stroll through the landscape of Google's primary colors bike cycle floor to floor, and no one disturbs you around the sprawling landscapes of Googleplex's campuses or jumps. The idea of Googleplex was made by Brin and Paige, which encouraged enthusiasts to be somewhat macho. It seems to work that it is too much chatting, blending the students who look rather intensely educated to see the happy and healthy crowd, but you will never quite guess it, often a droppingly rich. The site is free of cafes, volleyball courts are interrupted, each working area has a pool and table tennis table, you can visit a doctor or dentist, get a haircut, finish your dry cleaning, have a massage (Google's masseuse become a stock millionaire), go to the gym.

Book lectures, movies and music events-when I visit David Beckham just at the scene for "guest speaker". The walls of a whiteboard are full of algebra and jokes; The classes in Greek mythology have a space for learning. Of course, lots of gadgets. The cultural center lobby is a small surround Imax screen that allows you to enter a ZIP code and stand on any street in the world. Coinciding with the way Google searches here, now that I've arrived, I find myself standing again in my house outside London, exactly what I was two days and a transatlantic flight.

Ammite Amit "charm, although the galaxy is flying and talking to the computer can answer any questions that always have me. "Photo Source: Donnald Weber's observations

Google's search, Mr. Amit Amit, also came a long way here. He started a village in Uttar Pradesh, India, in the 8th year of a family where his life possessed any screen. When a man to 1977, in black and white TV, it carried the Amit, he told me all the magical prophecies. "There are two options," he recalls. "Programming, reruns for local farmers and the United States, such as the Star Trek series. "You really didn't think too much, and it's hard to imagine the Amit choices of these programs."

"I've seen too much interstellar travel, I can remember the extent of the heart attack," he recalls, laughing, "I am convinced that my mind is obsessed with flying galaxies in the computer conversation." Can answer any questions, always have me, of course I never thought that these questions will be solved in my life first. “

Amit found himself in the right place in any case at the right time. He began to learn the idea of searching as a graduate student in the United States in 1991, and this year the World Wide Web began making its connections. He did a Ph. D. and then at T Bell Labs only when he came to Google in the millennium, however, he experienced a strange "interruption". Everything in his life, like science fiction, seemed to be suddenly in his compass.

To prove this, Amit his Android smartphone to his pocket, like Captain Kirk, to talk about it. "Google: What is the population of London?" "he said. "The population of London is 8174000 in 2011," The conversational voice replies carefully. "How tall are you justin Bieber?" "He doesn't know. "Justin Bieber is 5 feet 7 inches tall. "Amit in my opinion, childlike delight. "If I fall asleep, you wake me up 20 years ago, today, I hear, I'll think, yes!" On my sign to fly to another galaxy? ”

What he showed, but he insists that it is still only the beginning. He said the Google search with evangelical zeal, another landmark change, its fast forward to the threshold. Search for a 10-year hierarchy of web-based links using the original brilliant principles, the great primary colors of knowledge of the dominant machine, Amit, "began to learn how to understand the real world of people, places and things."

Justin Bieber wants to answer his questions, and Google already knows a lot about it. Knowing that Justin Bieber is a person, the taller height means the height. "Well, you've got to go, and what is the semantics of being asked. But even that is not enough. Because there is this huge quality unstructured text that we know as Web. And you can incorrectly understand what is asking without really understanding how you are going to answer. “

So far, Google has received unprecedented signposter knowledge. It's not "knowing" what the answer is itself, but it has a very ingenious way of guiding you where you can find it. In a sense, this property is in the process of changing. This year, Google will launch its so-called knowledge map, the closest to any system has not been established, the network itself founder, known as the "Semantic Web", already understood the version, as well as Berners-Lee data, may provide answers, not linked to the answer.

Inside Google's headquarters. Image source: Donnald Weber Observation

Knowledge map is a database search the most people, location and things in Google's global 5 million. For each of these things, it has established a deep contextual context that makes it more than a string of words or a piece of data. So when you type "Downing 10th" to Google's knowledge map, this phrase is not any old address, but in you or I might respond – with the real world associated string, the most common problem of precedence.

Five years ago, when John Bater wrote the search for his book, it was the subject of history that was still clear, and he concluded to imagine the future of direct Asimov of science fiction. "All the data collected to the end. To collect nothing is left, but all the collected data are not fully relevant, put together in all possible relationships. Doing so, took an eternity of interval. ”

The knowledge map, you may say, is the beginning, the "Eternal interval". Google has more than anyone can imagine "nothing left to collect" as part of the equation. This is the search for a website that has not only the trillion world wide Web, but it is a good way to shoot all the world's streets, scan all the world's books, and collect every video uploaded on the public Internet, mostly on its own YouTube. In recent years, it has worked assiduously to accumulate as many people's sound records, in all languages and dialects in the sun, to power the translation and speech recognition projects. Face recognition in doing the same movie and picture. Not to mention the reluctance to use the possibility of bringing a lot of information to Google that has the benefit and communication, movement and search history of almost everyone using a mobile phone or internet connection.

This data has not only collected feedback for us as accurately as possible, but also for a wider purpose: teaching Google how to think for itself. Amit had with what he called the "signal of the remarkable", in the past more than 10 years, to find more accurate text and link based methods to make the search happen. But at the same time, and most importantly, the signals have become more complex, and Amit and his team have been able to "look at the whole world for data interaction, and we can start doing something else, which is required to start making computers understand."

Outside of Google's headquarters. Image source: Donnald Weber Observation

Way to do it is very simple. Divided into "Long click" and "Short click" Search Analysis. A long press for a satisfied customer. When a user performs a search, click on a result that is still on the site for a long time. They do not come back and immediately click on another result or improve the result set of their query. The length of the short press is reversed. It occurs when the user performs a search, clicking the result and quickly returning the result set click the result of the substitution. It represents a glitch. We may think we are learning from Google all the time, but with this continuous trillion click analysis, it is learning far more than that.

In this way, as early as 2002, Amit's idea of how to influence the context was always based on the refinement of the theory of Wittgenstein (Ludwig Wittgenstein). Ambiguous searches begin to transcend the search terms of other related words. Therefore, the phrase "hot dog" will learn about mustard and baseball games, without overheating the dog. "Subtlety," he said, "is what makes us human." ”

I think, I say, that along the way, he has been helping the people of this job. Suppose we have more precision in our search terms, we use Google?

He sighed and got tired. "Actually," he said, "it works in other ways." To get more precise machines, laziness becomes a problem. So actually our life will be more difficult. "He has a synonym for work, especially correcting and understanding and analyzing spelling mistakes." The dream has always been that the old Star Trek provides the right answer, and you think you need to know even if you don't know how to express one of the questions. To be like a piece of mind, in other words. "The game, which we want to make natural as a thought process," he said. "We are frantically focusing on users to reduce each possible friction point between them, their ideas and find the information they want." "The brain implants that are getting closer to the page are effective.

The knowledge map is the first real, heroic demonstration. A couple years ago, Amit said, "We met this small company Metaweb, machine and Human symphony, through the perfect system in the real world of people, places and things to start the computer memory method seems scalable, so we bought this company." “

By that time, metawab stored 120,000 reference points. Over the past two years, with its peculiar style, Google has quickly sped up to "more than 570.0018 trillion of the facts connected to them by reference". (This is a fairly large number: By comparison, the English version of Wikipedia has about 4 million pages.) Google is in the process of launching seven languages, designed to show the same local intelligence in each knowledge map.

The project manager of the Knowledge graph is Amily Moxres. She spoke to me, though this intelligence. It goes beyond the ability to differentiate between football scores and American English inquiries for a long way to go. For example: "In Japan," she said, "Our analysis shows that people want to know a lot about the blood type of movie stars, so this will be part of the world in a priority instant knowledge map."

Similarly, the Japanese Google seems to be short on the frustration that in searching sumo data is inaccurate as it may be. "Our work, straighten out," said Moxres. "We think we should at least be able to answer queries with a certain depth." "What kind of depth?" "At least in the most popular tens of millions of places," she suggested.

More importantly, Amit to ensure that all aspects of the data are correct in harmony with your desires. "If you want to find the doctor Martin Luther King's" I Have a dream speech, "he said," You might want the text, you might want a picture of him, but we guess that what you really want is a video he delivers the speech clips – how to get your search on the top. "Knowing the trend map can provide, it starts to know what you want to know."

In speaking Amit, it is very easy to catch the possibility of a technological utopia, and it's easy, of course, to forget that Google has created wealth faster and more effectively than any company in history, it may be the most effective invention of the advertising revenue of generators, and it knows we might think it won't (probably grow, Disturbed by the association, now that Facebook has announced its own data on the search engine, a great prospect of becoming more intimate with the personal history of revelation than Google has never dared to set.

Inside Google's headquarters. Image source: Donnald Weber Observation

I say Google employees adopt the same reflexive retreat, if you imply anything, if you think that their motives, all of this data collection, knowledge sharing, may be anything but pure. "Why don't you trust us, is that the same kind?" "flinched, has been powering the company's growth through loyalty and the belief that it has refused to reveal its own intimate search history, even if threatened, as it is currently by the EU, proving that it does not have the results of human-heavy algorithms benefiting its products with business partners.

Amit rejected all this. He winced when I asked: "What is on Google?" ”

"We are a search man," he said. "This matter has prompted me to build a search engine that will surpass my previous works." It's as simple as that. ”

In addition, he also believes that as a statement of faith, "all information is helpful." His favorite example comes from his own family. Every year, Amit's return to Uttar Pradesh and the changes seen in the mobile phone's availability bring all the world's knowledge. In most years, his father went to California State. "My father is a retired civil servant," Amit said, "When he visits us, he worries about the time of home and presents what you can bring home the rules are very complex to pass through and change all the time he will get harassed and hundred questions."

"I remember 10 years ago when he was here, and I found out how he made Google's Indian custom management rules," It's all in black and white, up to every minute. He printed out his chest muster. He came home and he told me excitedly that he had made the customs staff with that bit of paper and told him his gift, how his grandson complied with the letter, and the Customs staff replied: "Welcome home, Amit!" “

Singhal can doubtless point to many such examples. But not easily measurable, convenient search methods have changed our lives? I asked. About the method that has reduced the excitement of the way it makes personal experience and knowledge very rare in an accidental encounter of love, how to do?

Amit has been working on this. The knowledge map will still return the results, it thinks you'll probably need it, but in the list there will be a random element to build it, and there will be an opportunity for us to think that it might mimic the way it's another way. His current obsession is in behaviorism psychology, and he has become an enthusiastic student of Kahneman's work. "I just love it when people are detailing how they feel when faced with choices and decisions about what makes you run away when someone gives you 32 chocolates to choose from, but when you meet them, they can only give you a piece of chocolate. ”

How about, I don't know, Google's knowledge into its endless search?

"I don't know what else to do ..." said Amit, bright enough to make you in no doubt what his organization's guiding mantra was: he would be quick.