What is a planning specialist! What are we going to do?

What is the planning for? Some people say that he is the soul of a product; Some people say that he wants to figure out how to operate; Some people say that he is nothing, as long as he has innovative ideas; Wait, wait, wait. Too much talk. Through my own work experience, I divide planning into two types: product planning and operation planning. Some people may question how to divide it or what content should be included. I don't make any defense here, just express my own views. There is nothing to argue about, because there is no unified conclusion. Why is it so divided? The main reason is that these two types of planning work are very different, they need many different skills and qualities, and they also have different requirements and influences on the personality of personnel.

Product planning:

What is product planning? According to the literal meaning, it is easy to understand that product planning is the chief designer of a product. For different industries and different enterprises, their products are different, but the concept is the same. I like to use analogy to make readers understand what I mean more easily. Take the film industry as an analogy to the Internet industry, and the following positions will also be compared with the corresponding positions in the film industry.

Just like directors in the film industry, product planning usually plays the role of screenwriter. He needs to coordinate and guide the business logic of the whole product (clearly guiding every shot of the film): remember that it is business logic, not system or product structure logic, which will be completed by the system architect.

Obtaining business requirements and writing product execution planning documents (writing scripts): the most important part of my work will be described in detail later.

Select qualified project team members (looking for actors, photographers, post-film editing, sound engineers, props, etc.). ): At present, most of these tasks are done by the project manager, but I think a qualified product manager should be most responsible for his own products, which requires the ability to correctly select working partners and identify the work skills of people in other work links, especially the core personnel in the technical department, because once the core technical backbone is selected, experienced outstanding technical personnel will get twice the result with half the effort, and the technical backbone will also play a vital role in the selection of personnel in other technical work links.

Coordinate all aspects of work in the development process, and give timely feedback when the logic is unclear or needs to be changed (explain the purpose of the film, adjust the mood of the actors, and put forward the visual needs of post-production to the nonlinear editor, etc.). ).

Do some user testing during product development (watch video clips): Of course, I don't mean unit testing or integration testing, which will be done in the black box of technicians' daily work. Product planning only needs user testing.

In short, product planning is to obtain business requirements (usually from the operation department, the boss, or self-innovation), and use their own professional knowledge to turn this demand into a guiding document that the technical department can do practical work (that is, the content of foolsidea.org's Planning Guide for Fools), and at the same time cooperate with a series of related work in other work links. According to the enterprise project, you can call yourself RequirementAnalyst. I prefer to call myself a requirements analyst or an interaction designer to distinguish myself from the confusing concept of "planning".

Product planning is the connection point between business and technology, and it can also be said to be the central conduction system. Some large companies have many employees and several projects are carried out at the same time. At this time, product planning will be more detailed and work functions will be more professional. From chief planning to internship planning, the names are different, but the work involved is still the same.

Operational planning:

What is operational planning? Similarly, taking the film industry as an analogy, operation planning is like a pre-heater before the film is released, a speculator after the film is released, and an overall planner. Of course, it is not limited to this, but also includes many other jobs.

The so-called operation is to effectively package and publicize the existing products (movie advertisements).

Integrate related resources around you (make peripheral products, find partners and increase influence).

Organize corresponding activities for promotion (various activities support awards).

Criticize your achievements and speculate on your own value (film reviews are getting higher and higher).

And so on, in fact, there is no essential difference between the operation of the Internet and the operation of other industries, but the resources and industry users are different and the means of realization are different. In a word, the main work of operation planning is to grasp the market situation in time, integrate the surrounding resources, and promote their products through a series of operation means to achieve profitability.

To put it simply, it can be understood as a marketing worker, but different from the traditional marketing department, the so-called operation planning in reality mostly assumes many performance pillar roles (a bit like the film industry publisher), that is, the traditional sales department. The main reason is that the profit model of most companies in the Internet industry is unclear. The company not only needs a promotional superman who will spend money, but also needs him to ensure that he can bring real profits to the company. Because the profit model is not clear, decision makers are not sure whether a scheme can work after its beautiful promotion (of course, if it is like the trading relationship in traditional industries, it is another matter). This puts forward higher requirements for operation planning, that is to say, a good operation planning should not only have a wide range of channels and many friends, but also have a unique vision and market sense, which can accurately predict the actual effect after promotion. The latter is the essential standard to evaluate whether this person is an excellent operation plan or an ordinary operation plan.

Readers are advised to read an authoritative book on integrated marketing, which is of great benefit to their work.

Product planning:

Back to product planning, what kind of people can be called qualified product planning? What qualities should he have? Here is a brief talk about my own views, which will not be very comprehensive. Of course, I can't say that I am talking about the requirements of authority, but from the perspective of a professional, I think it is still worth your reference.

First of all, a qualified product planning should have the ability to describe a thing. What do you mean? As I said before, product planning is actually a bridge between business requirements and technology development. If operation planning represents demand and technical director represents development unit, then product planning is the lubricant and catalyst for effective communication and connection between them. An excellent product planning can completely transform the operational requirements into a development guidance document or other forms of information, express it and pass it on to technicians, and express the logic and requirements of business requirements in the communication language between technicians (how to express it specifically is beyond the scope of this article, I will elaborate in another article). Some people may say that what you just said is too simple, just write it by anyone, and it's not that complicated to show the technicians, just say it with your mouth. Hehe, if you say so, I think it can only show that you have not engaged in the actual product development process. Like other industries, what product planning needs to do is to describe the characteristics of the product in detail as much as possible before the actual development work begins, so that the actual developers can know the actual needs exactly, just like you need to draw the manuscript before making a movie, and you won't think about the present when actually shooting, otherwise the development cost will be unpredictable, and the possibility of product failure will be greatly enlarged (after all, I have seen many cases where operators write their needs to technicians and say that this is a development document. Why? AlanCooper said that in the eyes of technicians, the development document mentioned by operators is just a concept of things, which can not actually guide the work; In the eyes of operators, the development documents required by technicians are simply product instructions, and I don't know how to write them. Product planning, like their translation, translates requirements into work instruction documents. This requires that product planning needs to master two "languages", be able to communicate smoothly with market operators and technicians, and avoid different understandings and judgments on one thing due to different knowledge fields. Simply put, the function of product planning is to coordinate the balance between the needs of all parties and the actual working ability.

Furthermore, product planning needs the ability to accept new things quickly. Why do you say that? There is a simple reason. Can product planning design a good product without knowing or mastering the industry where the product is designed? What if the product planner doesn't know what he is talking about, even if there is a demand from the operator? Joke! Mission impossible! An impossible task! Therefore, a good product planning may not be familiar with the field of your product at first, but you must get involved in it in a very, very short time. Through the communication with relevant personnel in the industry, mainly operators, you can understand the business requirements, business logic and processes, and one of the key assessment points for evaluating the Excellence of product planning is also here: the ability to quickly identify products in unfamiliar fields.

In addition to the two basic skills just mentioned, the third is the watershed between advanced product planning and ordinary product planning. What is that? Is the ability to innovate. This ability is rare for demand analysts in some enterprise projects, because they mainly do business processes and logic, and only when an enterprise's operating model is mature will they do information work, so they don't need much innovation. But the Internet industry is not like this, and innovation is everywhere, especially in the operation mode and the integration with related technologies, which is very prominent. I remember a friend once said that there are two kinds of people in the Internet industry who have the greatest innovation potential. One is people who understand the relevant technology thoroughly, and they can make fundamental innovations from the technology itself. There are also operators closest to customers, who can find innovative services from the most basic needs of customers; However, both of these potentials have fatal shortcomings that are not easy to be discovered. Technicians are too focused on technology to know which fields or application points this technology can be applied to. Marketers are too focused on demand and don't know how to realize this demand, so they often fall into an endless fantasy situation. At this time, the people who are most likely to succeed in innovation are limited to the intersection between them, which means that there are only two kinds of people who will succeed in the Internet industry, businessmen who know technology and technicians who know the market. A simple sentence summarizes the ultimate goal of an excellent product planning.

I don't want to say anything else. Of course, there are many more, but if you can do the above three things, no matter which company you are in, any boss will value you because you are comprehensive. Of course, if you are your own boss, at least within the core scope of work, you can grasp the overall situation, rather than the blind touch the elephant. (Except finance, hehe. )