How to be an excellent product manager

Every member of the product team is important. Any successful company should complete all the work from product design, construction to market launch very efficiently. What I want to say is that one role is very important for building a successful product, and this role is often misunderstood or confused with other roles-this role is the product manager.

Roles and responsibilities

The role of product manager often has another name in the company, which is tied with other related roles, such as program manager, product market, project management, project management, or the founder or general manager of a small company. This is often the first confusion we encounter when we understand the role of product manager.

In Microsoft and some companies, the role that really has the function of product manager is called project manager. Confusingly, Microsoft also has the role of product manager, but in fact Microsoft's product manager should be regarded as product marketing.

We also find that some companies still define product managers with very traditional concepts, and they regard product managers as brand managers. The concept of brand manager originated from FMCG industry, but this basic marketing function only belongs to part of the responsibilities of product managers.

Well, no matter what the title is, you will find that there is an excellent product manager behind every great product-the kind that will be described in this article. So far, we haven't found any exceptions outside this rule.

Mixing the role of product manager with other roles, such as product marketing or project management, will make it difficult for us to find a candidate who can do both roles at the same time. Every role mentioned just now is very critical to the enterprise and needs to correspond to its unique skills. Although we also know that some big cows can be competent for multiple roles at the same time, these people are really hard to meet.

Furthermore, except for extremely simple products, all products need a dedicated full-time product manager, and only those who are dedicated enough can be competent.

If you arrange a product marketing or project management colleague to take care of the role of product management, even if this colleague has some related skills at the same time, he may not have enough energy to complete these different fields at the same time. Moreover, it is not uncommon for you to find a team composed of several product managers from a project that requires huge product management work. (Translator's Note: In the highly competitive interconnected product project represented by BAT, product management is mostly completed by the product manager team)

The most common problem is that we often see a product marketer being asked to play the role of product manager at the same time. Of course, he may have a unique talent in product marketing, but building a product and telling the world what it is are completely different. (Translator's Note: This kind of problem usually occurs in enterprises with technical background. Due to lack of market awareness and over-reliance on market functions, product management is absent. ) We often expect someone in the current product team to really play the role of product management, sometimes it is the head of research and development, and sometimes it is the manager. If he has the required skills and energy at the same time, it seems feasible. But usually, product problems appear at the beginning. (translator's note: most of the work of product management lies in target management, and finding helpers in the process often can't solve the problem)

Let's see what a product manager is responsible for.

Identify and seize opportunities

(translator's note: the author refines accurately. In the fierce interconnected competition environment, product management is first responsible for the objectives, and the value of product objectives lies in identifying and grasping opportunities. )

Product ideas can come from many places, such as:

Your consumers (users)

Competitor's consumers (users)

Industry trends and analysis

The management of your company.

Marketing and sales colleagues

Product development team

Your company's customer service representative

Your company's operational colleagues

Your own intuition about the market and technology.

As a product manager, your job is to evaluate this information and then determine which opportunities are worth grasping and which opportunities should be abandoned. If you are sure to find the best opportunity, then you need to further evaluate how to achieve the ultimate success. (Translator's Note: This kind of work is far from being completed by drawing product prototypes. Most companies confuse product creativity with product positioning. )

Opportunity assessment can provide two very valuable outputs.

1) One of them is the idea that you decided to give up:

Perhaps it is because the demand scale is not enough;

Or there is no feasible technical ability at present;

Or does not match the positioning of your team or the company itself;

Or for any other reason.

Your value at this time is to prevent your company from wasting time and resources in this unworthy place.

2) The other is the very valuable product opportunity you got, and the timing is just right. You think your team can provide a very effective product solution for this.

The most important thing here is to determine how to win in this market, and the management will know what kind of market the company is about to enter.

Launch the right product at the right time.

For an excellent product manager, the first thing to do is to launch the right product at the right time. This means that a product should not only be properly designed for the target market, but also be launched at the most suitable time window in this market under the existing technical conditions. Obviously, it is not difficult to sketch a product without considering the technical feasibility and necessary market opportunities.

Similarly, you can easily create a product that does not specifically address the needs of users. (Translator's Note: When we consider the demand, we often ignore the element of "timing", but it often has the most direct impact on the market effect. )

The art of product management is to combine your deep understanding of the needs and expectations of the target users with the technical ability of the R&D team, so as to define a convincing and feasible product. (Translator's Note: Therefore, the product manager is the person who stands at the intersection of various contradictions, and should also be the person who is the best at dealing with information asymmetry in the whole team. )

Whether the right product can be finally launched at the right time depends entirely on the insight, judgment and decision-making power of the product manager. Among so many seemingly possible and even predictable product functions, which ones can really bring the success of the product? Is the current technology mature enough to guarantee the quality standards we need? Can we make a product that is profitable enough in business?

Usually, the product manager will express the defined product requirements to the product team in detail through some form of document, which is called product requirements document (PRD) or product specification document. We will discuss the process of defining core requirements later, but the owners and ultimate responsible persons of these requirements are what we call product managers.

Give the product strategy and roadmap.

Usually an interconnected product will continue to evolve and grow, so when we mention the word "product", we actually mean all versions of this product. The product manager also needs to be responsible for the product process that evolves over time. This is very important for the following reasons:

1) 1. What a hard-working product team always wants to know is: What should we do next?

For example, is the product over here? Or have our products been upgraded over time to meet the growing market demand? This information is not only used to attract the attention of the team, but also the product strategy and version planning can produce a very obvious team incentive effect.

We usually compromise online content because of the change of market opportunity, but if the team can clearly understand that the functions they have completed have been arranged in the next version, they will feel better about their work.

(Translator's Note: For the product manager, planning the version tree in advance is a very effective team communication skill and an indispensable link in the translator's previous work experience. But be careful not to rely too much on it to achieve the ultimate goal of a certain version. )

2) When engineers are faced with very rich product decision-making content, they can be helped to consider the architecture problem for the product from a development perspective to the maximum extent. Obviously, the sooner you provide the team with more information, the better, instead of putting the team at risk of making major changes in the future.

(Translator's Note: As a product manager, it is very important to give the technical team the overall feeling of the product as soon as possible in order to mobilize the technical potential. Experienced product managers often get twice the result with half the effort. )

3) Third, it will let the sales and marketing departments know the product trends and help them provide more information when communicating with users and some industry analysts. Users always want to get the next trend of products in advance, but since this information is likely to be adjusted at any time, you must be very careful when publishing some relevant product details.

Once the product manager provides such a clear and convincing product blueprint and describes the development direction of the product in the next few years, these processes should be expressed by the product roadmap (or version tree)-when should the product have what capabilities and key version content? What value does each edition provide to the market? At the same time, the details of these contents will be reflected in various versions of the specific product requirements document (PRD) along this direction.

The product manager should not only be responsible for the strategic direction, but also be responsible for these steps, and be clear about the ins and outs of product evolution. The product strategy and roadmap should reflect the input and support of the whole product team, and should be reviewed and approved by the company management.

(Note: It should be noted that our national conditions are different, and there is still a huge gap between us and Silicon Valley in the level of enterprise management. Therefore, it is more important to spend energy on the internal communication of the product team and let the top management see the Olympic effect first, unless the management of your company has a deep understanding of the Internet market. But obviously this is a very challenging but necessary thing to do. )

Manage products, not teams.

It seems that this is not difficult to understand, but it is indeed a very challenging responsibility, and even the best product managers will encounter setbacks in this regard. This responsibility is to lead the team through product management, not directly manage the team.

In most organizations, product managers do not directly manage any professionals who really participate in the product building process. Engineers work for R&D manager, designers work for design manager, test engineers work for quality control manager and so on. This means that it is almost impossible for product managers to rely on administrative authorization to complete team leadership. She must try to persuade the product team to follow her instructions. As the person in charge of product requirements, she can certainly influence products in many ways by writing requirements, but she will soon find that many decision-making rights that can affect products do not belong to her. In this case, the product manager must make full use of her persuasiveness.

An excellent product manager can establish and develop a very strong cooperative relationship with team members. This relationship comes from mutual respect and her persuasive, logical, enthusiastic and reliable performance record based on facts. (Translator's Note: The word-of-mouth of the product manager comes from his own product team first, not the product itself. This is a way to find excellent product managers. )

Become a product representative within the company.

Throughout the company, the product manager will also be regarded as the representative of the product team. Maybe you will be more willing to devote yourself to the specific work of building a product rather than assume such a false reputation, but an experienced product manager knows very well that ignoring this important role will lead to the loss of project resources and the cancellation of the project, so that you will not get any support from the company, which is a necessary condition for the success of the product.

Be a product evangelist

An excellent product manager will be the evangelist of her products-she will constantly speak for the products and explain the benefits and future vision of the products to people around her.

In practical work, there will be many places for you to play the role of product evangelist. You may be invited to give lectures in different groups, such as other product teams, new employee training, sales meetings or customer feedback seminars. You may also be asked to publish an article in the company's internal magazine or prepare a product presentation for management.

An excellent product manager will take these tasks very seriously to ensure that more people can understand and support her project. So she understands that she needs to prepare some reusable materials for the product as much as possible. Especially in large companies, a product manager usually gives nearly 100 demonstrations of products during the project. Therefore, preparing more reusable materials, such as annotated speech materials, high-quality articles and easy-to-read periodic status reports, can reduce the burden in the long run, which is also the responsibility of product managers.

Excellent product managers will present products to different teams in the company, including two key audiences: the company management and the marketing and sales team. ?

Dealing with sales and marketing colleagues

Sales and marketing are another group that is very important to you. I hope you have arranged a marketing colleague in the product team to contact the sales team. If not, you may be asked to take the role of product manager.

Become a user representative

The whole process of a product from definition, design, research and development, testing to final release and listing is full of decisions, and each decision will affect the final effect. Behind these decisions are countless team discussions, and the responsibility of the product manager is to be a good representative of the core users. That's why it's so necessary to get to know customers and establish empathy. Not every decision in the discussion will be considered from the customer's point of view, and it is not necessary to do so. The most important thing here is to finally create a product that is very attractive to customers. Therefore, only when the product manager fully understands the users can he understand which struggles are irrelevant and which need to be adhered to.

Although other members of the product team can also be good customer representatives-product marketing with relevant experience in the target market; Quality control colleagues who are familiar with user usage scenarios; Designers can determine the comfort and tolerance of user experience, but it is the product manager who can ultimately represent the user's voice in the product team. You need to make sure that users are carefully considered in every product decision that will affect them (whether these decisions are direct or indirect).

The characteristics of a good product manager

Product managers who can fully perform the above duties are really rare and difficult to find. In the next chapter, we will discuss how to find excellent product managers from personal characteristics, knowledge, attitude and skills.

personal traits

Most skills can be learned, but there are undeniable characteristics that are very difficult to teach, which is the basic condition for finding a product manager. We regard them as "personal characteristics" of excellent product managers.

We believe that once you have these qualities, you can learn everything else, but without them, you can only work very hard to climb up.

Enthusiasm for products

There is such a group of people who just love products. This kind of love will not include all types of products, but it is not limited to one category. Excellent product managers will have a natural love and respect for good products, and they will create their own lives in this way no matter where they come from. (Translator's Note: This is the intrinsic motivation of an excellent product manager)

Enthusiasm is a "necessity" to build products. When defining products, help product managers to cope with long-term hard work and various difficult challenges. Not only that, the product manager also needs to motivate her product team to finish the work, and the appeal brought by this enthusiasm can help her do better.

So you can directly ask the product candidates what products they like and why, which will make it easier to judge whether you are chatting with such a person with product enthusiasm. It is not easy to pretend to be full of enthusiasm. Pretending to be easily exposed. For example, you can ask them from different aspects. As product managers of their favorite products, what are they most willing to optimize? You can also ask them which products they think are bad and ask them to give reasons. ?

User empathy

The ideal product manager doesn't have to come from your target users (both advantages and disadvantages), but she definitely needs to have empathy for the target market. This trait is very scarce for high-tech companies that make mass products. (Translator's Note: So the most basic product work of a company like BAT is to draw portraits of users to supplement the ability to empathize with users)

When we consider users, we often regard ourselves or our friends as our users. But the target market is likely to have completely different value, priority, emphasis, tolerance and experience. Ask candidates about the target market and see how they are different from the target users. Trying to understand the candidate's feelings about the target market, the most important thing is whether the candidate respects the target market and has strong empathy, or whether she thinks her work goal is to "motivate" the target market. (Translator's Note: This is also the key point that I pay attention to during the interview, whether to respect the market demand first, rather than trying to change it blindly. )

This is more important for products in the international market, because your products need to face different countries and cultures. There are too many similarities and differences between countries. Although many differences will not affect the product definition, there are some differences that need to be taken seriously. So can the candidate you are talking to know enough about your target market to give you the above answer?

Extraordinary intelligence

There is no substitute for natural intelligence. Excellent product managers have the ability to learn quickly. Excellent product management requires insight and judgment, both of which require an agile mind. Diligence is of course necessary, but it is not enough for product management.

Recruiting such a group of smart people is obviously not an easy task, which largely depends on the strength of the hiring manager. How to hire smart people is another important topic for the company itself, but if your goal is to build a truly successful product, the following is enough for you to meet a smart product manager. Testing intelligence is usually not an easy task. If you are very anxious to find a smart and insightful product candidate, there are many subjective evaluation methods here.

One way is to get into the dead end of the problem. Microsoft is famous for its high-intensity and efficient interview methods in this respect. Specifically, one or more experts and candidates dig deep around a problem and stutter. This kind of interview is not simply to see whether the interviewer has the knowledge corresponding to the question (note that knowledge is not intelligence), but to pay attention to how they deal with unknown problems. How did these candidates finally give the answer?

Once the candidate gives the answer, the interviewer will always change some questions and continue to ask the candidate. The interviewer will keep this conversation until the candidate is pushed to a question that she doesn't know the answer at all, and then she will be asked to give a very clear solution to this problem. This is a very effective method to test the problem-solving ability of candidates in practice. (Translator's Note: Facing unknown problems is the most common situation for product managers, but most teams don't realize it)

Another way is to ask two or three people in your organization who are most famous for their talents, and then ask them to interview the candidates, which will also help you identify the candidates' problem-solving ability. In this kind of interview, you don't have to worry about whether the interviewer happens to have certain professional expertise, but you should focus on observing whether the candidate is agile enough and shows the ability to learn quickly.

professional ethics

Although not every product team member has to pay the same degree of investment and effort, the role of product manager is not for those who are afraid of hard work, and this role requires a strong sense of responsibility. The product manager is the person who is ultimately responsible for the success of the product, which is also the burden on the shoulders of an excellent product manager.

Even if an excellent product manager has mastered the skills of time management, most of her time will still be spent on the product itself. Can I be an excellent product manager while having a family life outside of work? We believe that you can do it if you have certain qualifications. But many people want to work only 40 hours a week, especially when they can safely leave their problems in the office after work. Unfortunately, this kind of life does not make you a successful product manager.

We believe that we should express our expectations to the candidates very frankly at the beginning and let them know the efforts needed to complete a product management job. But to be clear, this is not "demanding" the working hours of the product manager-but if you find that you have to find a product manager to deal with the problem at a critical moment, obviously you have the wrong person.

It should also be noted that in the whole cycle of the product project, the degree of effort required at each stage is also different. Some of these stages have a tight rhythm and have to face great pressure. However, for an excellent product manager, what will not change is their concern for products and their expectation for success.

honest

This trait will also be found in other topics that mention company culture, but compared with other members of the product team, the product manager is the role that best reflects the company and product values. In most organizational structures, the product manager has no direct management authority over the project team members, so she can't give orders to the members directly, but finish the work through her influence on the team. This persuasion skill is based on mutual respect and trust.

Excellent product managers will show the quality and skills of a strong product team leader for a period of time, thus winning the trust and respect of the team. If the integrity, honesty and courage of the product manager are not perceived by her team members, then she will not get the close teamwork and efficiency needed to complete the work. (Translator's Note: Most product managers are unaware of this. )

An excellent product manager doesn't need to be a versatile expert in the team, but she should deeply understand and respect the responsibilities of each member of the team and believe that they will do their job well. As the main interface between the product team and the top management and sales team, the product manager often falls into a dilemma, such as being asked to release the product version faster or adding special functions to a group of "mainstream" users. The product team will pay close attention to and observe how the product manager responds to these challenges.

Evaluating a person's integrity is as difficult as evaluating his intelligence. For product candidates with relevant experience, the interviewer can ask them how they handled stress in past product projects. Learn more details and details. What made the situation worse? How did he handle it?

confidence

Many people think that self-confidence comes from experience. Well, of course, experience may be the source of self-confidence, but many very experienced product managers do not show the self-confidence they deserve (and you will often find that some graduates have overwhelming self-confidence, but this is usually because they don't know what they are doing. )

Self-confidence is a very important trait, because everyone, including product team, management team and sales team, is expecting the product manager to make them fully believe that their current investment in time, money and vision will eventually achieve success. Obviously, this is a difficult job, especially in those stressful and difficult times, people will expect to get inspiration from product managers.

Therefore, it is very important for the product manager to show confidence and always remind the team and the company why the product can be successful and why our vision is right. In the process of persuading the team to communicate, confidence is a crucial factor.

Communication ability

Most communication skills can be acquired through learning and can become an excellent one after many years.

An orator or writer. Product management needs communication skills from the beginning. As mentioned above, the product manager completes the work through influence rather than authorization-which makes her main work deliverables nothing more than "writing" and "speaking".