What is a Product Manager?

Product Manager (Product Manager) is a position in the company that is responsible for product management. The product manager is responsible for market research and determines what products to develop, what business models, and business models to choose based on the needs of the product, market, and users. And promote the development organization of corresponding products, he also needs to coordinate research and development, marketing, operations, etc. according to the product life cycle, determine and organize the implementation of corresponding product strategies, and other related product management activities.

Product manager

Product Manager is

Since 1927, the United States P & G (

The product manager is the leader of each product. In the marketing department, a product is within the group.

1. A successful product manager should have 35% of project management capabilities.

In terms of project management, and this 35% ability includes the ability to work in teams. A good product manager is first and foremost a successful project manager. The experience of project management is very important for the product manager. It can help the product manager better manage the product. The teamwork experience and ability can make the product manager better in the product team Handle personnel relationships and other situations within the team.

2. Individual ability accounts for 15%.

A successful product manager should be a successful leader. His personal abilities include his

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Product managers are often given the responsibility to manage and market a particular product line, brand or service. In some cases, product managers may also be labeled

Four principles for product managers

Attentive: Responsible for yourself and the product

Empathy: From the perspective of the user

Look out everywhere

Careless and Lungless: Do nt be afraid to scold

Product manager

Product managers need to deal with people and organize many complex relationships and tasks. Good communication ability, organizational coordination ability, resource utilization ability, promoting and coordinating the cooperation and orderly progress of various departments are the comprehensive capabilities that a product manager needs to have. Therefore, it is not easy to be a good product manager, and quality training in many aspects is essential.

The product manager should coordinate various relationships, including those in the R & D, testing, documentation, marketing, and sales departments, and launch the product as scheduled with guaranteed quality. Everything is achieved by people. The main thing to be coordinated is human resources. You must not occupy the time of all testers because you want to complete an OEM project. There is not much difference in communication between different departments, but Leader's way of doing things may be different in different departments. Therefore, on the one hand, it depends on the degree of cooperation of the other party. At the same time, you must learn to talk to the right people at the right time. Good questions can effectively move things forward. Especially in the case of no subordinate relationship, the interaction between people is very good, they can express their ideas very well to others, and persuade these people to cooperate to do things.

The product manager's job is quite trivial. He has to deal with various relationships and schedules. Unlike other tasks, he has his own focus and professional field. So how to do things efficiently in one day is very important.

Focusing on the target market, market survey, market positioning, market segmentation, and comprehensive consideration of product, price, channel, promotion, public relations, and service are all important aspects of marketing and product management. The so-called market feeling is more important how to generate some strategies through market phenomena, instead of the other party reducing its own price, and the other party advertising itself. The so-called strategy is to start with product positioning, user positioning, price and competitors, understand their respective strengths and weaknesses, find out where opportunities and threats are, and analyze and formulate future strategies. These qualities can not be obtained by watching the market promotion and reporting, it requires a lot of information feedback analysis, it depends on experience and feeling.

As a product owner, the pressure of a product manager is very great. Although in some companies, the success or failure of the product may not be linked to the profit of the product manager, but if some aspects are not carefully considered, there is a problem with the master disk that has been produced, causing the entire batch of products to be destroyed, causing huge losses to the company, or For some reasons, they did not communicate or arrange time with some people. As a result, problems were caused and the products could not be delivered on time. The product manager still felt the "culprit". These are the pressures.

Product managers need to have the ability and motivation to solve problems independently, treat products as their children, and do things with enthusiasm and passion. This enthusiasm determines that he is active, not passive, in order to continuously improve his value and ability.

Technology can learn, but quality is difficult to cultivate, some qualities are essential for successful product managers.

There is such a group of people who have an instinctive love for products, consider everything in their lives as products, and have a love and respect for excellent products. This enthusiasm is a necessary quality for product managers, and it is their motivation to overcome difficulties and improve products day and night. This passion can infect team members and inspire everyone.

Identifying this trait is easy, and allows the candidate to talk about his favorite products and reasons, talk about products in different fields and products that he hates, and ask the other party how he intends to improve his favorite if given the opportunity. The product. Passion is hard to disguise, and false pretense is easy to reveal.

The ideal product manager does not necessarily come from the target market of the product (this situation has advantages and disadvantages), but he must integrate into the target market. This trait is particularly rare for high-tech companies that make mass products. We tend to understand users and markets from our own perspective. In fact, the experience, preferences, values, perception, tolerance, and technical understanding of the target user are likely to be very different from ours.

Ask the candidate about the product's target market and let him talk about how to think differently. To understand the candidate's feelings about the target market, the most important thing is to see whether the other party respects the target market and hopes to integrate into it, or intends to change the user's habits.

For internationalized products and products targeted to specific regions, thinking in other places is particularly important. Although cultures have something in common, there are also many differences. Some differences are irrelevant to the product and some are crucial. It should be examined whether the candidate has sufficient knowledge of the target market and whether these two differences can be distinguished.

Human intelligence is irreplaceable. Product management requires insight and judgment, so it must have a keen mind. Hard work is of course necessary, but hard work is not enough.

Recruiting smart people is an easy task, and the results depend to a large extent on the ability and reliability of the recruiter. As the saying goes, "Things are grouped by classes, people are grouped by groups," and this is true. One way is to test the candidate's ability to solve problems. Microsoft's commendable, in-depth and effective interview is to examine the ability of the candidate to solve the problem. Usually, one or more domain experts conduct an in-depth investigation of the candidate. The interviewer does not care whether the candidate knows the correct answer, but values the candidate's ideas and methods for solving the problem (intelligence is better than knowledge). If the candidate answers correctly, the interviewer will adjust the question slightly and ask the candidate how to deal with the new situation. Repeat this process until the candidate is forced to deal with a situation where he doesn't know the answer and speaks a solution.

Each team role has different responsibilities and efforts. The product manager bears the future and destiny of the product, and is definitely not suitable for those who want to be comfortable. Even with the skills of time management and product management, product managers still have to invest a lot of energy in their products. Can successful product managers have time to enjoy a leisurely home life? With enough experience, I believe it can be done. However, if you expect to work only forty hours a week and leave work behind you after work, it is unrealistic.

How much effort does a successful product manager require? In this regard, I have always been frank with the candidates. Product management must not be measured by time, and it is not too much to pay. Most of the "firefighters" temporarily found in emergency situations are not suitable product manager candidates.

During the long project cycle, the effort and commitment of product managers are not static. Some stages are easier, while others are very stressful. But the degree of concern and anxiety of a competent product manager and the willingness to work for it will not change.

Among all product team members, the product manager best reflects the values of the company and the product. Usually a product manager does not directly manage team members and cannot ask others to execute orders, so he must influence and persuade colleagues around him through actions. This influence is based on mutual trust and respect, requiring the product manager to be a person of integrity.

The product manager is the hub between the product team, the sales team, and the company's executives. They often need to coordinate and deal with various issues, such as early delivery and meeting the special requirements of large customers. How product managers deal with these problems is seen by colleagues.

Trust and respect take time to develop, and product managers can only become true team leaders by demonstrating their qualities and abilities through work. If the product manager lacks sincerity, selfishness, and injustice in a bowl of colleagues, it will inevitably affect the overall efficiency of unity. Although the product manager does not need to be proficient in everything, he should know what each member is best at, respect everyone's willingness to give play to their expertise, and fully trust everyone.

Examining a person's integrity is never easier than investigating his intelligence. It is even harder to examine the integrity of a strange candidate. Candidates with work experience can ask them how to deal with the pressure of the job, and follow up on the details of the job.

Many people believe that experience can lead to self-confidence. If confidence can be built solely on the basis of experience, why are many product managers who have worked for many years without confidence? In contrast, college graduates who have just stepped into society tend to be confident (although this confidence usually comes from ignorance of their own condition).

Self-confidence is an important quality. Company executives, product teams, and sales teams all need to see the confidence of product managers, convinced that the time, money, and effort they put in will not go to waste. Confident people are more persuasive and more likely to be leaders that people are willing to follow.

A competent product manager regards himself as the CEO of the product, and is willing to take full responsibility for the ultimate success or failure of the product, and never make excuses. Although he knows that there are many difficulties to be successfully marketed on time-difficult development, long development time, high cost, complex products, etc., he understands that it is his responsibility to foresee and solve these problems.

This is not to say that the product manager must do everything by himself and supervise everyone's work, but that he should take responsibility in a timely manner when there is a problem, and he should encourage everyone in a timely manner when things go smoothly. A competent product manager knows that although the implementation of a product cannot be separated from everyone's assistance, he should be responsible for his own product ideas.

Mastering some important skills is key to building a successful product. I believe that as long as you have excellent personal qualities, all skills can be learned.

Many successful product managers are engineers, because planning a product depends to a large extent on their understanding of new technologies and how they can be applied to solve related problems.

Good product managers do not need to invent or implement new technologies themselves, but they must be able to understand the technology and explore its potential.

There are many ways to develop the ability to understand technology. You can participate in training courses, read related books and articles, ask programmers and architects, and participate in brainstorming in the development team.

Product managers need to prioritize important issues. There is a lot of interference in the process of developing products. The ability to focus on key issues, restrain the urge to continuously increase functionality, and be unaffected by key people or important customers depends on whether the product manager has sufficient self-discipline-not only to comply with the company's system, but also to strictly demand .

Almost all products have less important features-these features have no effect on increasing sales and user satisfaction. If you remove these features, the product will even be more popular because of its simplicity and ease of use.

The world of email, instant messaging, and mobile phones is full of distractions. You may come to work early in the morning and work hard all day long. You wo nt even be able to eat or drink. When you come home late at night, you will find that you haven't finished an important job in the end. Time is used to "fire" and deal with "urgent" incidents.

Distinguishing important tasks and urgent tasks quickly and skillfully, planning and scheduling reasonably is a necessary skill for product managers. If the product manager can't focus on the tasks that really matter, the product is inevitable.

An exhausted product manager who works seventy hours a week. They spent all their time and energy on work and overstretched their physical strength. To them, the most terrible fact is that all the work done is useless. For this reason, I intentionally added content of time management and reasonable arrangement of work tasks to the training course. The product manager's time should be used to change the status quo, rather than tired of attending conferences and responding to emails one by one. There are many things that are not worth doing.

As a spokesperson for the product team, the product manager coordinates the team's work with the finance department, marketing department, sales team, and company executivesthey must use concepts and terminology that these people understand.

I think product managers should have bilingual skills. This does not refer to Chinese and English, but refers to the ability of product managers to discuss technology with programmers, as well as with management and marketers about cost structure, marginal effects, market share, product positioning, and branding.

Product manager career requirements

Education and training

The product manager is responsible for the management of the entire life cycle of the product, so the product manager needs to have multiple capabilities. A qualified product manager must have received relevant training in marketing, demand analysis, user experience, data analysis, competitive product analysis, operational thinking, and prototype design.

work experience

Product development and management with more than 5 years of working experience, with good resource integration, communication and coordination ability and written report ability, independent problem solving ability and strong market analysis ability, sensitive to product and data operations, clear thinking and clear thinking Methodical, strong learning ability, able to withstand greater work pressure.

Product Manager Career Development

For large companies, the product manager is a very important role. Because the product manager is responsible for the success or failure of the entire product, the product manager has the right to interfere from research and development to production to sales. However, the situation is different in small companies, and the power will be relatively small, but product managers are very helpful to improve their innovation capabilities and choose to start a business. Product managers are typically developed by product specialists.

What to consider at the strategic level

At product planning and execution level

Product development team management

Product implementation and promotion

Because different companies have different requirements for product managers / product designers, they do different things. But at least to meet the requirements of the company, this is the first thing to do.

Common tools for product managers

Prototyping: Axure, Mockplus, fireworks, Photoshop, mockingbird (web), Balsamiq Mockups, omnigraffle, ink knife, etc.

Flowchart, mind map: Visio (Microsoft product), processon (online), Xmind, MindManager, omnigraffle

Graphics production and processing tools: Photoshop, CorelDRAW, AutoCAD

Product presentation tools: Keynote (preferred for Mac users), PPT (common for Windows users), SolidWorks (3D design)

Project and transaction tracking tool: JIRA (by Atlassian)

Project management: Pricise Project Management (PINDOEPM), Project (Microsoft product), Todolist, Excel, Sheet, Gcalendar, Google task, trac, Outlook

Online Collaboration: SVN, Google Docs, Mockplus, Zen Tao, Graphite Document, office365, Tencent Document

Test feedback: TestCenter, QC, Jira, Bugzilla, Firebug, TestDirector, IETester

Demand Pool Management: Mantis, Zen Tao

Team communication: Dingding, WeChat, QQ, outlook, MSN, GTalk, audio (precise communication)

Tool recommendation: Multi-use download

Note software: Evernote (Evernote), Onenote (Microsoft product), McCool, Youdao cloud notes, knowing, light notes

Code editing: Editplus, UltraEdit, Sublime Text 3, Textmate, Notepad ^[1]

Time and task management: Pomotodo, ToDoList, TaskUnifier, Toodledo, tick list, daily event clearing

User demand survey tools: questionnaire survey, web questionnaire survey tool