What skills do you need to be a product manager with zero foundation?

With the integration of Internet and traditional industries, the position of product manager has gradually become the standard of the company. Facing a broader market, product manager is still a new profession. A good product manager has a very high salary and needs to have many qualities.

1. What is a product manager?

Product manager is a common position in product management in Internet industry. Take primary responsibility for a product or product line according to the company's product strategy.

Product managers are at the core of business in Internet companies, and they are the creators of products. A good product manager can have the thinking of CEO through tempering. Apple founder Steve Jobs, Tencent founder Ma, WeChat founder Zhang Xiaolong and many other outstanding CEOs are product managers.

Second, the necessary skills of product managers

I think a qualified product manager should have the following skills: learning ability, logical ability, project management ability, communication ability, document ability and pressure resistance. If you want to be an excellent product manager, product sense is also very important.

As for learning ability, it is mainly reflected in change. With the rapid development of the Internet, product managers must constantly experience and understand new products in order not to fall behind. For example, a few years ago, you could be a good product manager as long as you could interact, but now that can only be the basic skill of a product manager. Moreover, products are closely integrated with operation, technology and design. Only by constantly learning and improving their sense of design, technology and operation can we better cooperate with these colleagues.

The requirement of logical ability is reflected in all aspects of product work. For example, when we make a prototype, we need to consider all the processes and situations of user operation. No matter the design of front-end products or back-end products, it may be necessary to deal with the operational logic between multiple requirements at the same time, which requires very strong logical ability.

As for project management ability, document ability and communication ability, the same is true. Product managers often need to make requirements documents, and many pages need to be defined by ourselves. Every update of an APP or requirement is a complete project. In some startup companies, these projects are actually promoted by product managers, who need to communicate with various roles in the process of project promotion, which involves project management ability and document ability.

Through observation, the market's functional requirements for product managers are as follows:

It is not difficult to see from the above work that to become a product manager, you need to have many abilities, such as market research, user research, competing product analysis, demand analysis, product design, interactive design, development management, demand management, user education, operation strategy, data mining and data analysis.

A good product manager can often significantly improve the performance of enterprises, and even turn the tide.

Excellent product managers have a solid theoretical foundation, can skillfully and skillfully use their own knowledge system, have keen insight, are good at discovering the details of product improvement and potential loopholes that may affect products, and even lead new trends.

Next, we will distinguish the mastery of ability according to the position in the work. For example, the positions of product manager are: product assistant, product manager and senior product manager, and gradually change from assistant to senior product manager, just like upgrading.

Necessary abilities of product assistant: logical ability, document ability, competitive product analysis.

Product manager: communication skills, project follow-up, multi-threading skills, decision-making skills.

Senior product manager: the overall product situation and the ability to lead the team.

1, product assistant

Before becoming a product manager, you need an assistant stage. At this stage, the product assistant will touch on the requirements of some function points, but not the whole function or the whole product line. As long as I have mastered the logical ability, document ability and competitive product analysis, I think it is enough.

As for the so-called prototype ability, in fact, I don't think it is a necessary ability for product managers. The reason for this is the following：

1) logic ability

What is logical ability? In fact, it is a closed loop composed of a large number of if…else…. No matter how complex the system is, it is also composed of many "yes" and "no" at the bottom.

Tips:

Practice is the best way to improve logical ability.

You can look at the product requirements written by other product managers and pay more attention to the process.

Understanding ability is also very important, but it has strong logical ability and understanding ability.

2) Document ability

Fully understand business requirements, turn them into logical requirements, and finally output product design.

The above process needs to be implemented in the document, and it doesn't matter what form it takes. Importantly, it is easy for R&D to understand and explain to project stakeholders.

3) Analysis of competitive products

For front-end products, this is very important: because now is not the era of behind closed doors, we need to fully understand the competing products in the market and analyze them.

Never analyze for the sake of analysis. What is that analysis? To put it simply, analyze competing products around your KPI, what can help you achieve the KPI goal, learn from it if you have it, and think about it if you don't, why do competing products do this, and what purpose do you do it for?

Here's why prototype ability is not necessary: the product manager draws a prototype just to present some processes and logic with an intuitive page, the UE will interactively design the page according to your logic, and the UI will visually design the presentation of different scenarios according to the requirements. R&D is more about looking at the prototype to understand what to do this time, not to mention the final UI diagram of FE.

Therefore, the prototype of product manager is just a grasping hand, through which all positions carry out their work. As for the high-fidelity prototype, the product manager has no time to show his skills in actual work, only to upgrade his skills.

The above is a description of the ability of product assistants, but for product assistants, it must be clear at this stage: What does a product manager do? Product managers draw prototypes? You can't compete with UE in interaction, but you can't compete with UI in vision. Function realization? This is the work of research and development and testing; Project management? PMO may be the first to express dissatisfaction.

2. Manager of Production Department

Basically, many people are in the stage of product manager, because I think the change from product manager to senior product manager is no longer a simple improvement of ability, but more a change of vision and thinking. The product manager is responsible for the overall functional module of the product, which is simply a system composed of many functional points.

1) communication skills

Communication skills have also been said to be rotten, which is very important, but what is the communication ability that products need? It's simple. Let others do what you want.

For example, if you need to communicate with R&D, you need to explain to R&D why you need to communicate, what is the process, and so on. The ultimate goal of communication is to persuade R&D to make this demand for you.

Tips:

Communication ability is different from expression ability.

If you can't get the other person's point of view, it's either the other person's expressive ability or his own logical ability.

There are many skills to improve communication skills, and no amount of skills is as useful as helping each other in the same boat.

2) Project follow-up

Project follow-up is not project management, project management is PMO's job. Project follow-up means demand follow-up, and the product manager must take the initiative to follow up the demand after review.

No matter whether this requirement is predetermined, whether it has been developed, what problems are encountered in development, and so on. As long as the demand is not online, the product manager has the responsibility to know what stage the demand is in and what problems it has encountered.

Project follow-up is a plus item for the product manager, which embodies the responsibility and professionalism of the product manager. At this stage, it is also a good stage to exchange feelings with R&D and test partners.

3) Multi-thread working ability

The work of a product manager is complicated, and he is often responsible for multiple requirements. Moreover, the product manager is also the intersection of many jobs, and many things unrelated to the demand function need to be solved by the product manager. Being able to switch between different working states at any time is the basic skill of a product manager.

In practical work, it is difficult to return to the previous working state after the work is interrupted.

4) decision-making ability

In practical work, we often encounter such words: "Whatever you do, you must listen to the product", "Whether you do this function or not, you must listen to the product" and so on. The product manager is the owner of the demand, and the direction of product function needs to be decided by the product manager. You have the right to apply for resources to use resources, and accordingly you have the responsibility to bear the product direction.

How to make the right decision?

Relying on experience: from years of understanding of users, markets, competing products and businesses, combined with my own understanding;

Relying on data: relying on market research, competitive product analysis, operational data, user research, etc. Support your own decision-making from the data dimension;

Relying on the team: by communicating with colleagues in business, R&D and operation, we can draw a more comprehensive conclusion from the perspective of others.

Finally, you collected a lot of information, some of which may still be contradictory, but the final decision must be made by yourself, because you are the product manager.

3. Senior Product Manager

Senior product managers are basically divorced from product functions and requirements, and need to jump out and look at products from a global perspective-this is the most difficult thing, because all your judgments and ideas are made by yourself, and you need to accumulate and output a set of your own methodology.

1) products worldwide

Through their own methods, have a global thinking about the product, such as the following questions:

Where are the boundaries of products and which requirements are useless?

In order to achieve the goal, what practical methods are there, considering all resources such as business and operation.

If a brand-new product is approved, can you use pictures to reflect the business plan?

Few people can see through the product, and those abilities mentioned above can be mastered through training. Personally, the perception of the overall situation of the product is a test of a person's mental height and width. A little empty, because I don't have this ability, but I think the direction is right.

For example:

At an MBR meeting, the product owner made some suggestions on our department's products. We adopt matrix management mode, and the product owner is not directly responsible for the products of this department. Just through the explanation of PPT at the meeting, some problems can be pointed out.

Each product has its own essence, which will connect users to solve pain points, and the company will achieve its goals. All departments work for this essence. Therefore, grasping the essence of the product from the overall situation of the product can better innovate the functions that meet the needs of users.

2) Ability to lead a team

In fact, many product managers have started to lead the team, but I still think it is safer for senior product managers to lead the team at this stage. You need to lead your friends to grow up together. Of course, some products need to be shared by others.

There's nothing to say about leading the team. Remember to say "come with me" at work, not "brothers, give me a rush"