How to quickly master product skills in operation 0- 1

Editor's Guide: If you want to say what is the most common position in the Internet industry, operation must be counted as one. Therefore, some people think that operation is the position with the least threshold and no core competitiveness in the Internet industry. In fact, in recent years, the requirements for operation are getting higher and higher, and some product skills are also needed. The author of this paper analyzes this and shares it with you. On some platforms, there are often confusions about operating this position, such as "operation is the lowest threshold position", "confused, I don't know what skills I have mastered after four years of operation, and I feel that I may be replaced at any time" and "where is the ceiling of operation". With all due respect, people who ask such questions often have no core competitiveness and risk being replaced at any time. 1 is that the professional skills of operation are not strong, and it is naturally a crushing defeat compared with other competitors; Second, the awareness of expanding professional skills horizontally is not strong, and the market demand for operating positions is not recognized. All the above problems can be solved by mastering a product skill. According to the mature experience and effective methodology of previous 100+ product projects, it is possible to improve product skills in a short time. By convention, follow the mind map. I. Reasons for mastering product skills 1. The need of market demand 1 the rigid need of job responsibilities Xiao Zhang is looking for a job recently. His confusion is that some job responsibilities look like products, and he can't tell what the company wants to recruit. He talked with HR in detail before he knew it was an operation post, but he only needed to have certain product skills. I don't know if this is a situation that many students who do operations will encounter. The position of most enterprises is that the more people they recruit, the better. Accordingly, they can create more value and indirectly save the cost of employing people. Therefore, when some enterprises have multi-skill requirements for candidates, other enterprises will soon follow suit, which has become a general requirement for candidates. Operators are required to have product skills, and more dimensions are considered. 1 means that the combination of production and transportation can indeed create more value, such as platform activities and fission activities, which are very mature cooperation modes. If you have the ability of the other party, you can reduce the possibility of mistakes and improve the efficiency of value output. Second, the life cycle management of the platform for users is getting longer and longer. With the improvement of the maturity of the Internet, the single concern of traffic introduction, innovation and retention can no longer meet the demand of output, and it needs to have the operation ability of a longer chain. The most important thing is that there must be product capabilities in operation. ② Be able to adapt to multiple tasks at the same time. As mentioned above, Xiao Zhang's problem is a common one, but if he has product skills today, his troubles will change from "how can I find a job that matches me" to "which one should I choose for these jobs that suit me". Yes, in terms of post adaptability, at least it can be extended from operation to operation, product operation and product manager. From the market demand, the main reason for this difference is determined by the organizational structure. For example, when the company was established, the gene was mainly based on production and research, and there was a solid foundation for production and research. With the development of business, the pure growth brought by products has encountered bottlenecks, and it is necessary to recruit operators to explore new growth methods. In this case, it is difficult for a student who only knows pure operation to play well in this kind of organization, because the organization has a relatively fixed organizational operation mode. If he doesn't know product skills at all, it is difficult to gain the trust of production and research, let alone lead. From the above market demand and the fact that individuals can adapt to more jobs, we can initially understand why we need to master product skills, and then analyze it from the practical point of view. 2. Communication needs ① When communicating with products, UI, project management, technology, etc. , information is easy to align and improve efficiency. No matter whether the process of a company is standardized or not, it is inevitable to cooperate with the above roles in the process of promoting the project. The more you communicate with which role, the more you need professional knowledge. This description naturally leads to the product manager's answer. Operation output is action language, and product output is interactive language. If we understand the basic differences, we can understand the same project. It is not easy to communicate between UI and technology in operating language. The essence of communication is to convey effective information. The operation is often in the upstream of the project, and the whole project cycle needs a lot of communication. General information is transmitted by words and dialogues in the project, so it is not enough to master the operating language. Conversely, it is more difficult for products, UI, technology and other roles to master operating language than for operators to master interactive language, which indirectly leads to greater necessity for operators to master interactive language. ② Collaborators can effectively understand the requirements, and the standard of high professionalism and effective understanding is whether the information expression is unique or not. For example, the operator's regulation on activity participation is that each person can only participate once. Convert it into product language, and refine it into judging+exhaustion path from the source whether during the activity or every day (without Visio, it will be displayed with xmind). If the operation does not understand the product language, there is no way to describe its own needs from the beginning. These details are very important for the effect of the activity. Take the above rules as an example. Suppose the platform has 1 10,000 people, and the activity lasts 10 days. You can only participate once during the activity, and the corresponding maximum number of participants is110,000. During the activity, everyone can only participate once a day, and the corresponding maximum number of participants is 100000, which is10 times worse. At the same time, there is a hidden benefit. If the professional performance is higher, it will win the respect of the partners. The influence of professionalism is that the partners will also strengthen their own professionalism, and at the same time reduce the part of the product that they make their own decisions because they don't understand the operation, which is ultimately positive for this project. ③ The landing rate of the project will be improved according to the strategy of 1 ratio 1. Mature operators have a self-knowledge. My plan is to build an aircraft carrier and finally export motorcycles. This is not implying Industry-University-Research's ability, but the normal state, which is mainly influenced by several factors: unrealistic planning, tight resources, difficult development, and the project is always a game between input and output. Knowing this basic premise makes it easier to accept the reality. When the operator has product skills, it can greatly reduce the impracticality of the scheme and ensure that the landing ability is infinitely close to 100%. For example, the boss made a request to the product manager that the theme color of the APP can change with the color of the user's mobile phone case, which caused a fight because it was ridiculous. 3. The need of operation-oriented demand ① Production and transportation game theory It is time to talk about the relationship between operation and products. First of all, there is no established rule that both sides must follow, but a so-called "norm" or "tacit understanding" process is formed in the actual organization; Secondly, because the functions of both sides are expanding, the coupling part is gradually increasing. Who has the final say, who has the final say, has become dynamic, including both the dynamics caused by the evolution of organizational processes and the dynamics caused by individual differences such as product and operation professionalism and personality. All of the above, in addition to the cooperative relationship between products and operations, will also lead to the game of "who has the final say". Is this important? This is very important, and the winner has more say. (2) Who has the advantage and who is more valuable? Yes, in an organization that evaluates value by output, there is always a meritorious "battle". Who won the first prize and who is indispensable determines who will get more scarce rewards, such as outstanding individuals and promotion places. When there is priority, it is easier for the dominant person to get it. This is understood from the perspective of scarcity. In addition, we should also consider the form of organizational structure, whether it is closed-loop or discrete. In the closed-loop mode, the above rules are more applicable to a big boss, and in the non-closed-loop organization mode, it is more reflected in the improvement of cooperation efficiency. Invisible hands are for seniors. In an organization, it is not only the division of job responsibilities that determines what norms and boundaries we should follow. Personally, it only accounts for 30%, and the other 70% is determined by the invisible hand. This invisible finger means that in cooperation, you have reached a tacit understanding of how to do things, what is the perceived boundary of each other's work, and finally what established norms have been formed. This is a bit abstract. To give a very detailed example: Xiao Zhang has just arrived in the Y department of the second-line A company, and the production and research are closed. Xiao Zhang, who has five years of working experience, is responsible for user growth, including channel expansion and efficiency improvement. He gained new customers through marketing fission and his business developed rapidly. Before that, everything on the product side was decided by the product owner, so at the beginning, Xiao Zhang promoted the project as a collaborator. By gaining the approval of the boss and the product owner, he was able to advance the project. At this time, Xiao Zhang only occupied 30% of the dominant position in the project, but Xiao Zhang is professional after all and can get results, although the way is different from that used by the previous product owner. After several times, he gradually established his professionalism and prestige in production and research. After half a year, Xiao Zhang can occupy more than 70% of the leading position in the project, not only mobilizing products, but also directly mobilizing R&D in some projects. It completely reversed the situation that the product had the final say at the beginning. All this was played by invisible hands and evolved in a subtle way. The operation should be able to persist for a long time and the professional skills should be excellent. Second, the product skills and methods to be mastered in operation 1. Basic product skills ① The general feature of activity project types is to reach certain indicators (common GMV), while platform activities initiated at festivals, platform promotion nodes and regular frequencies are mostly quantifiable effects. The carriers are generally self-control APP, applets and H5, and the common ones are: Double Eleven, 6 18. The corresponding product skills are divided into two parts: the foreground and the back-end. The foreground is divided into two parts: activity rules and interaction processes. The back end mainly focuses on configurable items, including showing the configurability of copywriting and the configurability of activity parameters. The biggest difference between the front-end and the back-end is what the front-end shows to users and what logic the back-end uses. Find out the differences so as to facilitate the subsequent sub-modules. ② Product function types The skill of product function positioning is a complicated interactive language, and it is generally enough to master the basics, that is, to understand the basic logic. It is characterized by optimization based on improving user experience and optimizing products to provide core services, which is often difficult to generalize. For example, when you enter Taobao, the process from searching to clicking on goods to buying a shopping cart to settlement is product-oriented. 2. Advanced product skills ① Judging the necessity of mastery Although it is a good thing to master product skills in operation, it is not that the more you master, the better, but that you master enough. The criteria for judging adequacy are more reference to external factors, rather than more and more unconditional (except for career development planning for product managers). External factors mainly refer to two directions. First, the evaluation of the company's current cooperation in Industry-University-Research, such as product-led projects, which are becoming more and more complicated, and their own product skills can't keep up with the requirements of the company's future strategic direction; Second, the market situation, the general market demand is result-oriented, such as what skills are needed to achieve the goal. Compared with the market situation of 2 1 and 18, the part of job responsibilities including product functions has increased by at least 50%, and the general market demand response is ahead of operational awareness in most cases, so it is necessary to observe the market. When a trend rises, we must first grasp it. Judge the necessity of mastering advanced product skills before entering the learning accumulation stage. ② Brief description of advanced product skill types, or division of advanced activity skills according to activities and product functions. Be able to control more than 2 parallel activities or platform A and above projects at the same time. There are ≥5 user states corresponding to the activity, such as the user has started, ended, participated but not initiated, participated and initiated but failed to meet the standard, participated and initiated but the activity time has ended, etc. Able to handle production and transportation tasks independently to produce H5. Familiar with inversion, able to coordinate UI, front-end, back-end and test workload according to activity time. Participated in active projects above 10 (the standard here is to have independent modules). The above are not objective standards, and their symbol is that the role of operators has changed from dependence to independence. Advanced product function skills: be able to understand and show more than two user interaction processes in detail (the display methods can be text description, page copy, interaction diagram, prd, etc. ), such as the whole process of selecting goods and adding shopping carts in the shopping process, including actively searching for goods selection and algorithm recommendation, goods selection ranking affected by regions, user labels, merchants' bids, increase or decrease of shopping malls, status caused by selected goods inventory, historical shopping cart item ranking, etc. Interactive processes that can generate the original functions of the product (as shown above), including but not limited to: pop-up logic, advertising space configuration logic, push/short message logic, etc. Other product-oriented functions involving multiple statuses/links. 3. The method of mastering product skills is the same as that of mastering advanced skills. Here is a unified explanation. ① Establish basic cognitive attention: The product analysis method of a mainstream APP is not applicable in the market, because the logic behind the mainstream app is very complicated, and a detailed analysis can only get a general cognition, and the input time is not proportional to the output. In the beginning, what we need is the establishment of a global vision, rather than blindly touching the image. A product needs three skills, and the three skills are different in different degrees: First, the demand analysis primary product can analyze more detailed business requirements and design products that meet the requirements of customers or users. Intermediate products can analyze rough requirements or even one sentence requirements, communicate with the business to achieve * * * knowledge, and guide the business to design products. Advanced products can find business risks and unexpected promotion points through analysis, and can dig hidden business pain points to design products. 2. Interaction design includes interaction model, task flow, information architecture, page prototype, interaction description, etc. It is the basic part, and the advanced products of junior high school need to be mastered to output simple or complex requirements. Third, the primary products of project management can control the progress of the project and solve the exposed risks or problems in time. Intermediate products can control the whole process of the project, avoid all kinds of risks and ensure that the project can be launched on time. Advanced products can predict the risk problems from the early stage to the later stage, and effectively solve these problems in the design stage; And can reserve time to solve all kinds of unexpected problems, to ensure that the project online on time or online in advance. ② Practical operation or practical operation is the most important. Without this step, it would be a waste of time. Product skills are practical skills, not conceptual skills, which need practical application to master. Please keep this in mind. The following mainly analyzes how to practice in two situations. First, the company has the conditions to do practical work, including job responsibilities or create conditions to try. The best job responsibilities, and actively strive for many practical opportunities. Conditions for creating conditions include not sharing products, or telling the boss about the conditions for your creative creation. Don't care about the size of the demand, but the accumulation of orders of magnitude, and try your best to complete it every time. At the same time, you need to pay attention to a key point: draw a flowchart or prototype as much as possible, and after each completion. After completion, consult the product predecessors and optimize the guidance. Second, the company has no conditions to do practical work, but it can also try, but the way has changed from being in the workplace to private time, and the demand has changed from actual demand to virtual demand. For example, the company is promoting the demand of 1234. You can find a PRD document that you are interested in, and you'd better output it yourself, and then get on well with related products and ask him for advice, basically following the same logic. Did you find it? Methods are always more than suffering, and the most important thing is that individuals should have ideas and actions. Here are a few tools that will be used in practice: Visio for drawing flowcharts, Axure for drawing prototypes, and xmind for drawing brain diagrams, which are basically enough. Three. Benefits of mastering product skills in operation 1. The need for short-term personal promotion, promotion and salary increase ① Personal ability improvement explains the benefits of personal ability improvement to some of the contents described above. As far as the long-term development of the workplace is concerned, personal ability is the most valuable. Compared with mastering the market and data analysis, it is more difficult but more profitable. Corresponding to the improvement of problem-solving ability. Promotion and salary increase are horizontal competition. (2) There are two scenarios for a company boss to recognize his subordinates' abilities: 1 helping the boss solve problems; 2 is to solve problems with knowledge or methods beyond the boss's cognition. They look very similar, but they are quite different in practice. For example, the boss puts forward a plan A, the goal is to realize GMV and let you log in. It is necessary to solve the problem of coordination and promotion between departments. The core node is still under the control of the boss, and you are solving the problem of execution; But the second is divided into two situations. One is to put forward a better scheme to persuade the boss to implement it, and the other is how to complete GMV and output an idea by himself, which is not within the boss's scope, but the key point is to persuade the boss to accept it, and the effect will be very good and get the boss's approval in a short time. 2. The need for long-term career development ① Future development of the industry Judging from the trend that the demand for operating posts has been extended from single skills to 1+N skills in recent years, the demand for operating talents in the future of the Internet will definitely develop in a comprehensive direction. First, because the Internet itself has developed to a highly mature stage, all the tracks have become saturated, and the problem solved has evolved from "how to find a suitable solution for a new industry/platform" to "which solution is more effective in the case of serious homogenization competition?" Second, the operational skills are also advanced, from "gaining the first-Mover advantage, first-come, first-served" to "maximizing the effect of combination boxing", from external channels to maximizing the internal effect. The future development of the industry will certainly guide workers to have the same ability. (2) The scarcity of capacity before market demand is a sharp weapon of market premium. When the market trend is about to happen or just happened, it is the most suitable time to promote the ability. Because you earn a lot of money through work, mastering product skills is also a suitable promotion direction. Before the market demand, there is a premium ability. At the same time, a successful experience accumulation method can also be used repeatedly to master other skills. Most importantly, mastering product skills is a good choice for long-term development in the direction of operation. Author: Lexington, official account of WeChat: Lexington.