This is my second article on getting started

Originally wanted to write, according to the established order directory in the second chapter is mainly about a career change and do products might encounter problems, there are readers expect suggest starting from zero start, that this issue was temporarily to skip the second chapter, main introduction to talk about from zero series, look at everybody with subsequent articles, expect to see which section first, just wrote what first. Because for me, it’s all about thinking and organizing, but it’s not. It’s all the same where you start.

preface

At that time, when I switched to products, I searched a lot of information, such as how to spend a daily day, what skills to master, what the company demands for the product, the development history of the product and so on, and gradually built up my knowledge of the product. In fact, it takes a little time to search for a lot of knowledge related to products. This article is mainly for a quick introduction, a better understanding of product work, the core competitiveness of products, and the establishment of a correct view of product career.

The following is a catalogue of proposed product managers

1. Basic knowledge 2. Love and hate 3. Advanced practice 7. career path 8. tool recommendation 9. selected cases 10. future trend 11. Recommend characters

“Products should have a strong curiosity about everything they encounter.”

Product capability model

The following figure is Tencent’s product capability model. Those who want to change careers can evaluate it first

Generic capability model levels

You can search for expertise, expertise, and organizational influence

From the introduction to zero

This section more from “how to do the product manager”, understand the thinking logic and the working content of products, involving behind each logical knowledge are part of the work, like the Mosaic pattern of each individual small, does not make you a product, is the introduction, learn about and build a theoretical framework, the future if have the honor to work in the product, Feel oneself foundation is still not solid, also can have a look repeatedly.

Products through

The following are deep feelings from past experience. The first is product thinking (the principle of doing things), and the second part is the skills that must be learned.

Again, it’s important to understand that core competence as a product manager is definitely not a technology, it’s a plus, not a base. If you don’t understand technology, you may push up the cost of communication, but if you don’t understand business, requirements analysis, and functional design, you will find that you don’t know how to start. These are the basic items.

Product manager is a comprehensive discipline, excellent products must be both liberal arts and science, keep an open mind. Open, inclusive, curious, willing to think about the reasons behind things, will broaden their horizons, see the problem more profound and comprehensive. That’s why when you’re interviewing for a product, focus on a set of things that you’re looking at, what’s the way of thinking?

Product thinking

1. The greatest value of the product lies in the solution and implementation

The solution includes not only the design of software product functions, but also the solutions that do not need to do functional development. For example, the company wants to carry out a new business. In order to support the implementation of the business, it is suggested that the business use EXCEL tables to deliver the business information flow to ensure that the business process runs through.

2. The CEO mentality

Product managers don’t just put a feature online, don’t do training or notification, don’t look at data, don’t collect feedback, don’t want to use it, and then move on to the next version. Some new product managers only do product design, after the development schedule management, resource planning did not spend what thought to consider, the result can be imagined. That’s the big difference between getting a product online, having a good product, and meeting business goals.

3. Do things based on facts

Front-line data and feedback is the most convincing, and whoever has it has the most say. The product can be developed in the right direction as much as possible, so whether you want to verify the conclusion, or persuade others, first think about how to get the facts, mainly user feedback and data.

4. Empathy

Not everything has enough feedback and data to go by, so you need to rely on empathy to make decisions. Empathy is a very good quality for a good product manager, and for some people it’s an innate way of thinking. But it is not impossible to cultivate, it comes from continuous observation and training, thinking, action, feedback, summary, and gradually form a more accurate judgment of empathy, and finally internalized into a kind of consciousness.

If you think it is just a job after reading the above, why do you think so much? My advice is to discourage you from making products.

Product skills

All products need to go through a process from scratch or concept to implementation. Prototyping is the process by which a product manager turns a requirement or concept into something that can be intuitively understood by a UI designer, engineer, or tester. A prototype is a tool for visualization. A prototype is an “intermediate” with a certain “deterministic” quality. Use axure tool to draw here, spend a week to copy some products, but do not be the core of the product is not how beautiful the prototype.

Here are a few things that most people can learn quickly and take a little time to learn. As a programmer, how could you not?

1. Have enough breadth and depth of understanding of the Internet, which is not required as a new career changer. Be aware of how the current product format is divided, such as what tooling products are represented, what community types of products it has, and how it works.

2. Have good expression ability, communication is the most common thing the product does in daily life.

3. Have strong logical thinking ability, which can be trained after day. The knowledge involved is complicated and needs long-term practice, so you can visit some professional product communities.

4. Familiar with the basic operation of computer, daily office software and everything.

Learn more skills and work principle, the basic work can respond to the primary products, as for a higher ascension, still need to learn more and more close relationship with products subject of management, economics, psychology, logic, these a few respects key study after work in the product, form their own knowledge network.

charged

Product managers have to learn more complex, at the beginning of the requirements and a variety of ideas, experience, design theory spend less time. When you actually get into your day job, you’ll find that very few people come to you to talk about theory. Real work pay attention to is practical, you learned three years of dragon stunt, the result of the work to let you kill pigs you do not know how to start, the final output of the product is only a result or solution.

It is easier to know how to do things than to do them. I hope you can start with this article and put it into practice. Start with writing product analysis reports and solve practical problems you encounter, such as “what can I do to find the right product work?” and start to disassemble the unimplemented solutions.

This paper does not discuss how to write documents, how to draw prototypes, how to do competitive analysis, etc., but I hope to use this article as a guide to practice, know the problem, the answer will naturally come out.

The more you learn, the more ignorant you become. First you see trees, then you see branches, then tissue cells…