What is the methodology of the product director? This article has seen a lot. The product director experience of the entrepreneurial team brought a different feeling to the author, and the author found a different secret.

Editor’s note: This article is from “Everyone is a product manager”, the author is dead leaves.

I. Product Director’s Question

In 2015, due to the public account, a startup team invited me to join as the product director. This is a niche product. We provide services for car driving instructors, hoping to pass the car driving instructor. Establish a bridge between the owner and the car sales.

In a nutshell, this is a more networked car sales platform. The coach is the platform’s car sales staff, and the coach’s driving test students are our precise customers.

This is my first job as a director. I am very grateful for this experience, which allowed me to peek into the secret of the product director. It was during this process that I had a certain skill for the product manager. Deep perception.

In the early days of the project, we simply thought that the driving and training market was a very promising market. Every existing driving instructor has more than 50 students, which means that 1,000 coaches can cover 50,000. Driver’s license, or a user who will have a driver’s license.

This means that you only need to pay 1000 coaches to get the customer’s cost, you can have 50,000 accurate car owner (quasi-owner) user traffic, although there is no detailed investigation, we still conclude that the car driving instructor market is very promising.

1. We have too many things to do

The first tough problem I have encountered, we have too many things to do, what do we do first when we perform the landing?

As a startup team, our technical resources and funding are extremely limited, and as a product director in the team, this is a problem that makes me feel suffocated.

We spent a month exploring, continually conceiving, and then negating these ideas. In the end, we made a decision, first coach, to provide an Internet tool for the coach, to create a coach’s personal brand image; when there are enough coaches to use, then contact the car manufacturer to obtain vehicle sales qualifications.

This decision has been going on for a long time.

In fact, any decision about positioning will last for a long time, investing a lot of resources and funds, and driving the whole body is probably the meaning.

One concept that I have repeatedly mentioned in training and public classes: every requirement of the product managerWill involve the input of resources, the output we output, can be directly equated with the money.

If a requirement requires 10 developers to complete in a month, then this requirement is equivalent to about 200,000 capital investment. By the return generated after the implementation of the demand, it can be judged what the quality of the product manager’s demand is.

This concept relies to a large extent on this entrepreneurial experience.

2. We have too many problems to solve

After the project went live in the market, I encountered a second, very difficult problem: there are too many problems to solve.

This is almost a problem that all products 0 to 1 must meet. Before the product goes online, the user’s feedback is lacking. We can use a single thinking to make the product pure, even a product with only one function is OK. .

However, after the product is used by the user, there will be a lot of sounds, many problems to be solved, everyone has their own ideas, and the user’s needs are not always the same.

Some users really like the A module, I hope that we can refine on the basis of the A module; some users do not agree with the A module, but they are full of interest in the B module, I hope we can hurry to improve the system; even Some users want us to provide new modules to meet the needs he mentioned.

During this period, my secret understanding of the product director was clearer. Before that, I was already a senior product manager with many years of experience. However, there is still a product supervisor and a leader of the product director. I have put forward the requirements of the leader and passed their decision. This greatly reduces my probability of making mistakes.

When I became a product director myself, no one told me what to do and what I should not do. In the face of so many problems, what should be dealt with now, which ones can be handled later, and which ones can be completely ignored, how should I make “decisions?”

There are behind these issues one after another, and the time I take to make a decision is longer than once, and the error rate of the decision is not reduced.

In fact, as the product operation time increases, the number of problems we need to solve also grows rapidly, far exceeding the number of problems we solve – which leads to the fact that the error rate of my decision-making has not only decreased, but has increased Quite a lot.

There is a wrong decision. I still remember it. This decision took us a month and let other equally important things get delayed.

We hope to jointly test the driving test site and launch a system for online payment registration. Students can directly schedule the examination time and pay the fee through the website. At the time of the exam, you only need to go to the test center to write off and you can start the exam.

To do this, we need to do a separate app to mentionSupply to the test center staff to write off the use.

In terms of results, it took a month to develop, but there are no resources for the test sites to use for us; although we have reached some verbal agreements during the development process.

In the end, this thing will not be there. The precious month of the entrepreneurial team is a loss we cannot recover.

3. We have too many directions to choose from

If the most unstable factor of the entrepreneurial team is the direction, if the data is healthy and positive, then the direction is stable; but once the data has stagnated, we will question the correctness of the direction.

Sometimes the problem of some practice level, or the data caused by one of my wrong decisions, is stagnant. The team members will not blame me. The first reaction of everyone is to question our correctness.

Next, the third tricky problem I encountered: there are too many directions to choose from.

The direction and positioning are not the same. Our positioning is to provide the driving instructor with an internet-based tool to bundle the coaching user group, but there are still many directions to choose from under this positioning.

In my team, there are some directions, high feasibility, and logically established:

  • An e-commerce tool that a coach can sell. We can provide merchandise for the coach, let the coach become our micro-business, sell goods to the students; and the coach gets a commission in the process, which can increase the coach. Benefits, thus bundling this group.

  • Or provide a tool for coaches to sign up for a group purchase. On the registration page, provide a group function, which can bring more students to the coach.

  • Or, to provide a coach with a brand image-building tool, just like a business card once used, the tool has a personal space for the coach, a photo of him and past students, some of his teaching photos, and even Provide some tools for segment video creation.

At that time, there was a lot of work, praise, and even vibrato. It was not popular yet, and some products were not yet online.

In the face of so many seemingly correct directions, how should I make a decision and judge how to convince my team, this is the third tough problem I have encountered.

I often say that I am a product manager with an entrepreneurial mindset. However, the entrepreneurial mentality does not represent the ability to start a business, which makes me fall into deep anxiety.

Second, the secret of the product director

These anxiety is like three layers of waves, one wave after another, one wave is heavier than a wave, and the strong sense of powerlessness spreads in my heart. The desire for knowledge has never been so rich. This is my reading. One of the largestperiod.

Only by constantly acquiring new knowledge, I have a better understanding of the predicament, a lot of reading, and a lot of thinking has given me the opportunity to solve these problems.

And my product methodology is also concentrated in this high pressure environment.

In order to improve the team’s combat effectiveness, I have developed rules for meetings that reduce anxiety and uneasiness in the team.

I also organized monthly data reports for all members of the company to publish our data. In fact, in terms of data, we have not stopped. We still achieved some good results, but we are not very clear.

In order to improve the development efficiency of the R&D team, I designed the Excel requirements document and asked the team to use it. This document will increase the overall R&D efficiency by 50%, allowing us to do more.

Of course, I have more time and still put in the direction of thinking, I designed short-term core data goals.

We reached a cooperation with an integrated auto dealer in advance, and achieved nearly 5 million transactions in just one month.

The community system has also been constructed. More than 10,000 car driving instructors have been accumulated in Chengdu alone. There are only 13,000 driving instructors in Chengdu, which means we cover 76% of the market.

I think you already understand that the secret of the product director is “decision making”, and our ability to make the right decisions is “decision making.”

Now, time has passed for another five years. Looking back on the past, the idea that was still immature has gradually matured, and my understanding of decision-making has become more formal.

It’s not difficult to make decisions. We can make a decision by throwing a dice, drawing lots, and guessing a fist. It is literally understood. Decisions only decide to implement a certain strategy. That’s it. That means you just have to decide.

The really difficult thing is, why do you want to make this decision? How can I be responsible for the outcome of the decision? How do you make the right decisions?

Decision is an act, it can be decided, and making the right decision is an ability. The probability of making the right decision is our decision-making power.

Here, I want to emphasize to you that decision-making is not the ability of the product director, but the secret of the product director. This secret, you can know earlier, this can speed up your process of becoming a director, but also allows you to form the director’s awareness and pattern earlier.

More importantly, the decision-making and decision-making methods are able to continue to generate positive value during the time you are a product manager, so that you can do the right thing as much as possible so that you can find the error. And circumvent the wrong choice.