This is the first part of the principle series. The author wants to systematically sort out some experience in TO B product management, design, development and operation. I hope to share with you and learn.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “SaaS product theory”, author Li Donglin , authorized to reprint.
In the previous article “How to define the MVP of the B-side product (on)”, we talked The first three steps to define the MVP product, determine the product positioning, find the seed user, determine the product route, today we will talk about the next few steps.
1: Determine user business flow chart
After the product route is determined, based on the product-defined route, we will determine the user’s business process flow based on the business purpose.
It is still taking the personnel module for example. Several key user business flow diagrams include, for example, employee on-the-job process, employee contract management, employee change process (transfer), employee turnover process, and so on.
Determining the user’s use of the flow chart is to ensure that the product can support the daily business of each role, as complete as possible, not to miss, but also to sort out each business function list and define priorities. Ready to work. There are also many articles in this area, and the author will not elaborate.
2:: Determine the list of function points
The product-based user usage flow chart determines the list of online function points for each function, similar to the following figure: 
After defining the function points for each process, One thing to do is to determine which features are on the line to implement, and which features are still to be maintained offline. This is also an important step. You can refer to the following principles:
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Offline processing is extremely flexible, there are no rules, and it is difficult to process the process or function recommendations that normalize the current business logic offline. .
Be aware of a basic principle of softwareIs to establish a set of standard processes or automated rules, if the offline processing is extremely flexible, it is difficult to standardize the rules, then such a function is not suitable for making standard product functions, leaving a standard universal mouth to the customer, let The customer processes offline and enters the data on the line.
As an example, why there are so many pre-tax adjustments in the salary, after-tax adjustment projects, there are too many different situations, can not be standardized, leaving some mouths for users.
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Offline processing is much more convenient than online processing
Each business process If you strictly sort out the function points, you will find that there are various situations that need to be handled. At this time, the ability of the B-end product manager to be simplified is very important. The analogy of the company’s leave is that many people will consider designing the following features:
a: If the employee has applied for a vacation and the boss has not approved it, do you need an undo function so that the employee can cancel the order that can be submitted?
b: If the boss has not approved for a long time, do you want to set up a function that is automatically approved for a few days? Different companies approve the approval by default. Does the approval reject a parameter?
c: If the application is on vacation, the boss refuses, can you support direct submission after the original order is directly modified?
To be honest, in reality, the author is particularly afraid of encountering such a logically rigorous product manager with no grooming ability, blindly adding function points, increased function points will bring out many other special cases, resulting in more functions. The more complicated it is. In the MVP phase, these scenarios don’t need support, but one thing to ensure is that when these scenarios happen, the business won’t go down.
Fact In this case, as long as the MVP stage guarantees support for the most basic business processes, employees can submit leave, the boss can approve or reject, and the last three cases can be supported in the early stage. For scenario a, the user can talk to the boss verbally or on WeChat, and let him refuse to solve it. For scene b, I am sorry, the boss has not been approved for so long, and now the communication is so developed, WeChat tells the boss. For scene c, after the boss refuses, resubmit a leave request, enter the date and choose a fake kind of work?
3: Determine the priority of the function point
Determining the priority of feature points generally depends on the following dimensions:
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Strongness based on feature requirements
Evaluate the intensity of functional requirements, and the indicators of strong user pain are important dimensions, such as whether the employee induction process supports employee self-employment (employees input their own basic information), if for a small and medium-sized company, There aren’t a few new employees entering the company in a year, so the input of this information is completely on the HR side for input. Employee self-service entry functions are not needed at all, or they are considered at a later stage.
If the target customer is for a large customer, the amount of new employee entry per day is very large, if this is the customer’s main appeal for efficiency. Then the prior priority needs to be improved. Remember that all considerations are based on product positioning and business scenarios and are a benchmark for any judgment.
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Frequency based on feature usage
Frequency is also an important indicator dimension of functional priority. For example, the adjustment of organizational structure adjustment, some companies may not be able to adjust the organizational structure once a year, then the organizational structure adjustment function can not be so high priority.
The author once saw the design of some projects, considered a lot of very extreme low-frequency transactions in the early stage. In the early stage, it took a lot of time to develop the extreme situation, and finally the product development cycle was extremely long. In addition, in the product design, the handling of extreme cases is also in the normal process, resulting in extremely difficult to use products. In fact, these extremely low-frequency functions can not be used once in a few years, and can be put in the late stage.
In addition, in the past few years, the wave of all functions of B-side has been blown up, and many low-frequency uses, or most of the functions that users use in front of the PC, have been mobilized. In fact, no one is used, and wasted. A lot of manpower and material resources, but also because of the complicated functions, the mobile terminal of the management system is exhausted and the experience is extremely poor. Today, when mobileization is so popular, the author would like to ask you, do you really need to move the function?
The choice of function points is a very important measure to test the level of product managers. Different product positioning, different company resources, different team capabilities, the best answer for the same topic must be different. .
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Avoid overdesign
Some product managers consider the problem because it is still relatively narrow, and because there is no technical background, they don’t know much about the development workload of different designs.It is easy to over-design, and the product person who proposes that the app skin should be adapted according to the color of the phone case is a typical example.
I also give a very simple example. When performing employee or customer information maintenance, there are often employees or customers whose addresses need to be maintained. Some people have an address, some have two, and some have three. Addresses, so some product designs may be natural to design row-level support for addresses, and support unlimited extensions. If the most extreme situation is three addresses, your product positioning is not supported by large customers around the world, similar to sap positioning, it is enough to support up to three addresses with column level, the development workload is small, for the user front end It is also very easy to use.
Overall, based on product positioning, business scenarios, team situation, the size of the problem is simplified, the best design, the simplest path is very important. Through the above steps, I hope to help you define the MVP function of a B-side product. Also welcome everyone to leave a message!
Author: Li Donglin (micro-channel public number: SaaS product say; Micro Signal: jianguzhuxin), former head of ADP products in Greater China, 14-year To B R & D and product design, team management experience, leading through a variety of large-scale business management Software design, research and development, online, and several years of mobile Internet TO C entrepreneurial experience, welcome everyone to add me WeChat exchange.
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