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01

The product manager is a promising career, and the Internet has been a great endorsement.

In 2010, iPhone4 entered China, and Jobs was the product manager of the country. In the same year, Ding Lei was interviewed by reporters, claiming that he was a product manager at NetEase.

In early 2011, “Business Value” magazine and the “Innovative Product Selection Conference 2010” held by Geek Park, Li Kaifu, Zhou Hongyi and other participants gathered around the “product manager” topic for intense discussion and sharing. The quotation of “product manager is the future CEO” is frequently issued.

E-commerce products, in addition to front-end users, also need to supply, warehousing, logistics, distribution and other aspects of the supply side, the product service chain is very long, so most of them are operational drivers. Social, games, tools, content products, supply chain is very short, front-end user traffic is the core, especially games and tools, the function is supply, the product can complete the service closed loop from the supply end to the front-end, so the product manager becomes The core position.

After Steve Jobs, Zhang Xiaolong’s WeChat once again became the product manager’s work. Tencent’s well-known product genes have made Tencent’s PM a target for major Internet companies. Tencent’s disciples, together with the influence of Tencent’s products, have further magnified the product culture, in addition to Suhua, Yu Jun, Fu Sheng, etc. A large number of product-driven success managers, product managers have become the symbol of Internet positions in everyone’s mind.

In 2010, there was a young man with a baby face who claimed to be “Lao Cao”. He left the six rooms and started a business. The content community was established as “everyone is a product manager” (hereafter referred to as everyone PM). In this year, Ali’s Su Jie published a book, also called “Everyone is a product manager”, which is the foundation of the PM workplace, and now has version 2.0.

Since then, PM content and books have emerged in an endless stream, and positions have become popular. Even everyone is a product manager, and once became the preferred career for Internet access.

02

Everyone can count as their own product manager, starting with an MVPM (Minimum viable product manager) and pursuing MVP (Most valuable product), no matter what they are looking for. Just startNot too late.

The MVPM (Minimum Feasible Product Manager) in the narrow sense defines the diversified professional skills of product managers. The PMs of the Internet claim to be a group of people at the intersection of technology, business and design.

First, technical ability

1, programming, the software is essentially a program, so as the PM of the Internet, although it is not necessary to learn to program, but the minimum common sense must be understood, the fastest way is to communicate with the technical staff, and it is necessary to be in the PRD Listed clearly, such as the preconditions of the function input and the postconditions of the output.

2. Architecture, the old lining is a technical idiot. When starting a business, there have been countless pits in this area. The case of pulling the whole body is too numerous to mention. The technical department can’t move and say refactoring. The development time is just a few months. During the period, I couldn’t wait to program myself, and finally found a shortcut, which is coupling.

Each function module should be as independent as possible at the beginning of product design, especially not to interact with too many variables globally. Through the low coupling between function modules and modules, most modules can be reused and transplanted, and when A module has a problem that only affects the locality and does not implicate the whole body, so that rapid changes and changes can be made during agile development.

3, data model and API, common point understanding, data model is related to system architecture, multiple modules of the system will store product usage data, such as user click login and purchase, users leave data in different modules, if Need to call the complete user data, data sharing between modules.

The method of data sharing is to establish an API interface. The API allows two modules to communicate with each other and exchange information, and also allows communication with external modules, that is, can call public APIs provided by others, such as those commonly used by our products. The data analysis tool is an interface call.

Second, business ability

1. Project management. Since the beginning of lean entrepreneurship, most Internet companies have adopted an agile development process, which can fragment the management development progress, greatly shorten the development cycle, and adjust the demand priority according to direct market feedback. Then change the order of requirements at any time, and the development progress will not be postponed.

For PM, you need to understand the basic process of minimum version control (Git), collaborative programming (GitHub), version testing, and version release. After that, you need to cooperate with the agile development related Scrum, Kanban, split size, Evaluation of priorities, forecastsSprint cycle, attending standing morning meetings, etc.

2. Unit economic benefit, LTV (customer total value) and CAC (acquired customer cost) are the basis for constructing a business model. The essence is LTV>CAC, and the customer value is greater than the customer cost.

If the user value is not high, such as a small program, PM needs to design more low-cost passenger functions, and even each function module tries to induce users to share; if the user value is high, such as SaaS products, PM can not be overwhelmed. The design should try to weaken its sense of existence and give customers a feeling of being more like their own system, in order to obtain continuous renewal of customers.

In addition, unverified micro-innovation, do not arbitrarily enter the fiercely competitive Red Sea market, the PM of the technical background is very easy to make mistakes, like the barrage function of the standard B station, think that similar small innovations can Like the B station, it subverts the entire market structure. This is a typical inversion. The core of the B station is the secondary content. The barrage is only a high-value-added personalized design for young users, essentially turning the commentary into a curtain.

3, data collection and analysis, data is usually used for rapid decision making, many products have independent data PM posts, professional skills need to know how to write SQL, and for most PM or start-up projects, understand third-party companies to provide The data analysis tool is all right.

Feedback tracking of real-time data is actually a short-term perspective on the evaluation of product features, especially A/B testing, which is a data model that operators like to refer to. Short-term data may not only blur product features. Causality assessment, and may overdraw the life cycle of the product.

For example, the low-priced package that e-commerce stimulates the eyeballs, the package contains a lot of inferior products, the low-price strategy only seems to attract users, and the short-term feedback data is also very prominent, but in the long run it hurts the user’s reputation and causes a large number of users. Loss, PM should pay more attention to the long-term health of products.

Three, design ability

1, design consistency, visual design and programming are similar. Many design styles of products are global. Each product should have strict standard style rules and icon components, not just UI design, but also front-end engineering. And the design also needs to cater to the user’s habits, and can’t place the button position and pixels at will.

For example, Apple’s WeChat App completely inherits Apple’s design standards. When you use WeChat, regardless of visual experience or interactive gestures, you don’t feel the sense of violation with IOS system; including the design of many products in PC period. It also basically conforms to the fonts, button pixels and interface habits of the Microsoft system.

The PM of many startup projects also has interactive design, so you need to know more about the UI and the front end. It is best to ask the relevant colleagues directly to develop the corresponding standard style rules for interaction, especially for the App sliding operation. There are many differences with IOS. For example, the drawer design is not suitable for IO.S, because sliding this gesture to the right is no problem in the Android system, and the gesture inertia in the IOS system is back to the previous level.

2. User experience, product is the simple creation of PM from the perspective of God, and the use of research is the actual optimization of the user experience. Common questionnaires, usability tests, and competitive analysis are all in the scope of research, but many of these Time will be reduced to form, and there is not much reference.

The best use of research is that PM itself is a deep user. As Zhang Xiaolong said when compared with Ma Huateng, he instantly became the most discerning idiot user. For the primary PM, this requires people and products to be more compatible, that is, they love themselves. Products can do this.

You can experience the product without bothering, just like an author wants to read the article he wrote 100 times, and then continuously optimize and adjust it. PM repeatedly experiences the product over ten thousand times. If the heart is not really love, it has already spit. Good products are like good content. First of all, you have to love yourself.

3, prototype, interactive prototype is a PM introductory course, can standardize learning and operation, so the current PM are basically proficient in various prototype tools. Although the prototype is faster now, the product logic is more prone to low-level errors, and prototyping logic loopholes have become commonplace when programming.

The old PRD was popular when it was lined up. At that time, there were hundreds of pages of prototype wireframes and website flow charts. Before the product was developed, the function logic was repeatedly verified by the PM during the drawing process. The old lining still continues. This habit, the first version of the product is best to be self-abuse once, in order to know all the logic of the product, and then replace the PRD with agile development.

Technology, business, design and other skills are all-encompassing. For the early MVPM (Minimum Feasible Product Manager), the ability is unlikely to be so diverse, so it is not suitable to compare PM to product CEO. PM is more like a router. A transit link to connect the project team.

The core willingness of the company’s management, the business layer is controlled by the CEO, and the technical layer is controlled by the CTO. MVPM provides work signals for the project team’s technology, design, testing and other colleagues, and regards itself as an always-on ” Routing, responding to various issues in a timely manner to promote effective iteration of product core capabilities.

03

Internet PM is more like Da Vinci.

Lean Ventures advocates that products follow market feedback and quickly iterate demand, so product development will be very uncertain. In the unknown environment, it is necessary to learn new knowledge. Therefore, all positions of Internet companies are advocating full-stack talents, not just PM. Microsoft is the best case. Since Nadella took office, she has made great efforts to build a learning organization. Finally, the elephant of this era has started dancing again and once again walked the top of the world.

There are a lot of learning and discussion channels for PM. I know that the media community has gathered a lot of Internet topics. I have also received a lot of PM courses, such as App and paid products, and many of the best-selling books published at home and abroad. The opposite of the Internet methodology, in addition to business analysts and business managers, also declare their claims through various channels.

The product manager’s professional skills do not have standard answers. PMs can only rely on their own products, and they can’t completely follow the external opinions. The product manager position is also very vague, including PM, operation, and project management. Various interactions, such as interaction design and senior management, are also the direction of users for major media and vocational education.

The media traffic is large, but the dependence on advertising is very strong; vocational education is easy to cash, but the cost of obtaining customers is very high. Therefore, the dual-engine conversion of content + education has naturally become the preferred mode of PM vocational education.

1, everyone PM: mainly for entry-level product managers, PM is mainly learning tools and documents in the early stage, the curriculum can be relatively standardized, the level of the lecturer is not high, the senior PM of the major Internet platforms can be competent, so Everyone PM does not produce course content, mainly to connect high-quality lecturer resources and C-side users.

Compared with similar professional education with higher transaction weight, the content media weight of everyone’s PM platform is higher, which not only reduces the traffic cost, but also gains the commanding heights of the brand. In this year’s generally cold winter environment, people People’s PM development is still smooth, and the team has recently moved to a larger office space.

2, Know: The knowledge of Kochi’s atmosphere ($3.5 billion) has far surpassed the foreign benchmark product Quora (about 2 billion US dollars), knowing the most about the Internet, and the quality of users is also high. Very early, Zhang Xiaolong, Lei Jun, Li Kaifu and many other Internet rumors endorsed, including last year’s Ma Huateng also appeared late at night.

Knowing that content positioning does not focus on the Internet, so it does not have the persuasive power of PM vocational education. It can only try to pay for knowledge. The willingness of users of fragmented content is gradually falsified, so it is not enough to know that it is constantly being licked. Although the content quality is high and the traffic is large, commercialization still needs more trials.

3. Technology Media: Many readers are senior managers of PM. The user level is higher. They are more concerned about current affairs news reports and in-depth analysis of the industry. The content production side is basically financial reporters, analysts, entrepreneurs and investors. The course design is similar to that of business schools. The lecturer resources are mainly famous scholars and celebrities.

, Titanium Media, Entrepreneurship, i Dark Horse and other platforms in the field of venture capital, in addition to content media drainage, for high-end usersVarious types of business schools and offline activities, as well as FA, financing, and data services for investment and cooperation, have been established, and joint office space has been established for entrepreneurs.

4, knowledge payment: In the past two years, the app-based knowledge payment platform has won many Internet professional courses and lecturers. Most of the fragmented content is aimed at early beginners. Different from the standardization of educational courses, KOL has strong credibility and does not have standardized content. PM is too convinced of the “teacher” theory, and must stubbornly treat those non-standard processes. Before the old lining, I met a PM colleague who closed his mouth and “Liang Ning”. The theory was stubborn and even affected the progress of the work. In fact, no one can make a success through the book boy reading.

The rise of knowledge paid, the biggest contribution may be to encourage lifelong learning. The content overdraft of knowledge-paid KOLs is very serious. A set of logical self-consistent methodology usually takes a long time to polish. Those big V who have updated the voice course for several years in a row, the knowledge reserves are large, the content will be weak, and finally In the trend of informationization, users began to doubt the paid value of fragmented content, which is also the development of knowledge paid products.

Product managers are problem-driven most of the time. Although they are under pressure for a long time, they have the fastest growth rate and can experience the manager’s perspective at close range. They are also deep users of the above four types of products. Products are also the core of a company’s success, especially for new projects. Each role of the team will have its own ideas. From this perspective, everyone is a product manager. As a designer from zero to one, PM work is difficult to quantify, so it is the result-oriented, coexistence with products, learning ability, responsibility is the two essential qualities of product managers.

04

The business model of the Internet is that there is no business model. After the capital has ebb, it is found that most products are streaking. The future product model of the Internet urgently needs innovation and change.

1. Commercialization, most products do not consider commercialization in the early days, but try to accumulate enough user scales. This model not only depends on financing, but after many rounds of iteration, the products will move toward Extreme development. The gold coin rewards of the interesting headlines have little to do with the content products. They have become purely the “tools” of the wool party; Ruixing coffee has nothing to do with coffee. The coffee discount is also a weight for obtaining user data.

2, algorithm distribution, algorithm distribution content is the iconic technology of the mobile Internet. This kind of “thousands of thousands of people” has created the prosperity of the current vibrato, fast and short video, including the effect of data monitoring advertising, and also a lot of high traffic. The core value of the product. In the future, users will pay more attention to identity privacy, especially for mid-to-high-end users. They are very disgusted that they are being monitored. Most of them have begun to uninstall algorithm products. The future of this model is facing challenges. The CEO of Vibrato predicts that next year’s 1 billion short video days will be Basically belongs to the Arabian Nights.

3, user size, total mobile Internet usersAfter the top has been shrinking, it is likely that the next negative growth is the length of use, not only the dividends are no longer, the existing market bubble will also burst one by one, the market size will be further compressed. The user is no longer satisfied with the experience of most products, but is forced to keep it because the conversion cost is too high. For example, WeChat, the opening rate of the public number continues to fall, the circle of friends and WeChat data has plummeted, and the word-of-mouth of WeChat is getting worse. If it is not a kidnapping of the relationship chain, the data should have dipped.

4. Cloud computing, as the foundation of the next generation Internet, all future software and hardware products will be deployed in the cloud service ecosystem. From 1.0 to 2.0 to the mobile Internet, every intergenerational change will produce many leading new product models. Since the development of cloud computing, the giants are still pushing, and few new products can stand in front of the stage. In the preemption of To B “public cloud”, the C-end “consumption cloud” still stays in the initial stage of collaborative office and multi-device synchronization.

The mobile Internet is coming to an end, various modes are also converging, PM is facing multiple challenges, marketers vigorously encourage the residual flow at the end, KOC and private domain friends are popular, social and e-commerce are very open Nowadays, social e-commerce is a self-contained one. Short-chain products are married to long-chain services, and e-commerce robs social scenes. For PM, there are more processes and skills to learn in the future.

I hope that the worst times have come, everyone can do their own product manager at this stage, and plan a perfect career roadmap.

05

After 2011, the old lining from the media to the Internet, settled in the more popular Sina Weibo that year to do content, then there is no such thing as the media, netizens from the media are called grassroots large.

Inadvertently searched and crashed into the website of “everyone is a product manager”. I was very impressed. At that time, 90% of the articles on the platform were issued by the ID of “Lao Cao”. Became the earliest readers of the platform. It was still the age of SEO, and I could read the in-depth insights about product managers. At that time, it was the old lining of the Internet, just like the teenager found the candy house.

Lao Cao is the CEO of Renren PM. The same name ID has not appeared on the website. Lao Cao has not moved through the nest. Now he has been deeply cultivating PM media and Internet vocational education for 9 years. It is definitely a deep PM. The old lining has been founded N times. It is a coincidence that he knows Lao Cao. Because he loves classic art in his heart, he is very respectful of Cao Cao’s long-term thinking. Therefore, he has become a vocalist on the platform.

When the product manager is the hottest, the old swaying machine has been operating for several years, and after the entrepreneurial experience, it is often viewed from the perspective of operations and entrepreneurs, growth hackers, lightning expansion, and operations. And when the entrepreneurial methodology is very hot, the more familiar old lining is the first publicly questioned, denying the financing-driven lightning expansion, and immediacy data.Leading short-sighted hackers and calling for a return to product culture.

Product development and data growth are often not linear. The “roadmap” we plan to develop is basically around a linear operating path. Product-oriented and operational-oriented paradoxes have always existed, compared to operations. The rapid growth of PM, the value of PM is actually more important, can deepen and penetrate a field, time is the best way.

Product thinking locks in long-term value, operational thinking focuses on short-term growth, business and games are similar, novices will always become veterans, and operators are better at quickly repeating newbie maps, while real PM players can see different gameplay scenarios, up Exploring creative work can be painful, but more valuable than in situ repetition.

The hot phenomenon of the phenomenal products is too numerous to mention, the short video ZAO has just swiped the screen, and the same face, the magic camera, the nerve cat is the same, but this time the speed is faster; the operation-led long-term independence There are also no precedents for the beasts. The US group, Ctrip, and the various departments of the 58 are already flourishing. Product development needs to be positioned for a long time, and PM only represents a kind of thinking, not a product and operation in a narrow sense.

So everyone is a product manager.