Big PM | product concept introduction to general manager

I have known product manager for a long time, but I have been lacking in systematic learning. Most of the time to the product and product manager of the relevant concept of a half-understanding, boundary awareness is also very vague. So this article from the beginner’s point of view from 0 to comb the product manager knowledge context.

The topic structure of this paper is as follows:

• Product and product manager concept

• How to be a Product manager

• How does the product manager work after being qualified

• How to evaluate the quality of the product manager’s work

A, product

1.1 concept

Before we get into the concept of product manager let’s take a look at what is a product?

A product is defined in the dictionary as something produced. Apart, since it is production, it must be to meet the objective needs of some users, that is, it will be used by users. In the era of the rapid development of the Internet, objects are not only visible and tangible entities, but also include some non-entities such as services and functions that cannot be physically touched. For example, physical objects such as mobile phones and computers can be called products, and Internet services such as Internet, WiFi and Weibo can also be called products.

So you can summarize the product in one sentence:

A product is a combination of tangible entities or intangible services/functions produced for the purpose of satisfying user needs.

1.2 Five Layers

Since the product is to meet the needs of users, the product will have different levels according to the differences and changes of the needs of different users.

The products that can directly meet the needs of the most core users (can be non-physical) are called core products, and the external manifestations of core products (such as physical items) are basic products. On the basis of the basic product, users will expect some special functions in addition to the core functions. Such products are called expectant products. An additional product is one that goes beyond the desired product and adds something that brings more benefits to the user. Potential products indicate future improvements and changes in the product.

In addition, different layers of the product correspond to different layers of users. Typically, every product has a seed audience that wants the product to meet their core needs. If the basic product meets the needs of the masses, it will attract more mass users. Among mass users, if a large number of users are interested in the product and expect more features, they will use the product frequently and become active users. When additional features are introduced, there are users who are willing to pay for the experience and become paying users. Potential products bring more potential users.

To sum up, users generate demand, and demand becomes product. On the contrary, the product solves the need, and the need satisfies the user.

Take the most popular example, wireless communication is one of the core needs of people in the Internet era, and the users who urgently need to use wireless communication function are seed users. At present, the physical mobile phone with wireless communication function on the market is the basic product chosen by the mass users. With the development of science and technology, people expect mobile phones to be better looking and more useful, so smart phones can be said to be the products that the masses expect, and users who expect better products (such as rice fans) will be very active. In addition, the cloud service function on smart phones is an additional function built in by mobile phone manufacturers, which brings more benefits to users. At the same time, many mobile phone users will buy cloud service members. Future smartphone developments such as bendable, foldable or transparent will attract more potential tech enthusiasts to buy experiences.

1.3 good product

We already know the concept of product from the above, so how to evaluate and define a good product in today’s ever-changing products?

First of all, as a basic element of the product, it must meet user needs, especially the core needs must be perfect and extreme. Secondly, in the competition of many similar products to meet users’ needs, we must ensure that we have the core competitiveness of our own advantages, otherwise users will easily switch to other similar products. On this basis, the product should also have a unique value proposition, highlight the irreplaceability of the product, further consolidate the user base, explore potential customers.

In the Internet era, in addition to the above three macro characteristics, a good product should also have the following characteristics:

• User experience first

• The devil is in the details

• Rapid update iteration

• Less is more

Compare the above points to analyze a typical good product example — Apple.

Product manager

2.1 concept

I thought product manager was a manager-level position until I really got into this industry. After I joined the work, I contacted with the product manager more and found that the post was called product manager. Through systematic learning, it is found that the product manager is indeed the “manager” level, but not the “manager” of the department or company, but the “manager” of the product. So this cascade of cognitive changes is a bit of a “mountain is a mountain, mountain is not a mountain, mountain is a mountain.”

So how do you define a product manager? From my personal understanding, product manager consists of product and manager levels.

Let’s start with the product layer. From the product definition, we know that its role is to meet user needs. Therefore, as a product manager, I must be good at finding some problems of some users in some scenarios and solving these problems through a well-designed product. In other words, product managers need to create products that meet the needs of the target audience in a particular scenario and maximize the user experience.

Look at the management layer, as the name implies management. When a product manager creates a product, it’s not the end of the product, it’s just the beginning. Because the launch, promotion, operation and other management work of new products still need product managers to closely participate in, layer upon layer check. In addition, product managers also need to constantly verify product logic, summarize experience and optimize products according to the actual operation data of products and user feedback, so as to achieve the goal of product commercialization. Therefore, product managers not only need to create products, but also need to continuously manage products and manage their entire life cycle.

Here is a one-sentence definition:

The product manager is the person who discovers, excavates and solves user needs, and achieves product commercialization goals while improving user experience.

2.2 Core responsibilities

From the above definition, we can already see the responsibilities of product manager, which are mainly divided into the following aspects:

• What: Through research, data statistics and analysis, What are the target users, user needs and demand scenarios?

• How: Need to master How to achieve products that meet user needs through cooperating with various departments in design and development?

• What: We need to dig into user scenarios and needs and analyze What products can meet user needs?

• Why: We need to have strategic control over the positioning and direction of the product. Why do we need to make such a product?

In a real career, different levels of product managers may focus on different core responsibilities:

It is important to note that no matter what level the product manager has reached, there is a principle that needs to be followed:

Make sure that every design, every improvement, every decision is headed in the right direction.

3. Capability model

Iamsujie’s sentence “Everyone is a product manager” is almost the most popular sentence in the product manager industry. By definition, everyone can really discover and try to solve user needs, so there’s literally no big problem. But similar to the previous question, are all product managers good product managers? The answer, of course, is no. So what are the qualities and abilities of an excellent product manager?

Let’s take a look at the Tencent product manager ability model from @elson who loves eating fish.

Regardless of whether the graph is true or false, it can be seen from the graph that Tencent product managers are required to have as many as 18 kinds of abilities, and the standards of various abilities are improved accordingly with the improvement of the level. A closer look shows that these 18 abilities really cover the hard and soft strengths of product managers, which shows that product manager is not an “empty” position.

3.1 hard power

Hard power refers to the product manager’s industry expertise and the specialized skills necessary for the job. First of all, professional knowledge is easy to understand. It refers to relevant knowledge such as product thinking, business logic, design methods, technical knowledge or office skills required by the work of the product manager. Combined with the functional core and work cycle of the product manager, the professional skills of the product manager can be divided into three chunks:

• Marketing ability: market research and demand analysis, external business communication, etc

• Product ability: product design planning, prototype document making, version iteration update, etc

• Operation ability: event planning, data analysis, marketing promotion, etc

Generally speaking, the hard power of product manager is to combine professional knowledge and use professional skills reasonably.

3.2 soft power

Unlike demonstrable hard power, soft power is an ability that is both difficult to measure and indispensable. As a product manager, the following three competencies are equally important:

• Learning and refining ability: adapt to the development of the Internet, fast learning, can extract and summarize rules and methods, and reasonably apply them to practical work

• Communication and collaboration skills: cross-functional collaboration requires strong communication skills and teamwork to complete products and solve customer needs

• Leadership: have the spirit of ownership, can lead the team to complete the project

In addition, in huang Zhao’s article “Systematic thinking, AI product manager required course”, a product manager must have the ability, quoted as follows:

Product managers need to get into the habit of precisely defining all the problems around them. What are some of the phenomena? Even friendship, communication, can be defined. The criteria defined is that it can be reproduced in any scene.

Personally, I think this is very accurate, because the essence of a product manager’s job is to find and solve problems. Only by truly understanding and being able to accurately define requirements, can products be designed in accordance with the scenarios used by users.

Four, the work cycle

From the descriptions of these concepts, it is easy to summarize the product manager’s job responsibilities in one sentence. Here is a one-sentence definition:

Explore the needs of target users, design and build product prototypes, realize the smooth launch of products, analyze and summarize data and optimize, constantly update and iterate products, and complete business goals as soon as possible.

But what does a product manager have to do with a product from birth to death? Let’s take a look at the life cycle of Internet products:

As can be seen from the figure, with the extension of time, the product enters different life periods, and the number of users and user activity have corresponding changes.

From infancy to maturity, the product needs to constantly improve its core features and user experience, and ensure rapid iteration. However, at the same time of rapid iteration, we need to pay attention to the feedback of the user market and the dynamics of competitive products, because they predict the direction of users to accept and love the product. Only when the product is in the right direction and in line with target users’ expectations, can the decline of the product be delayed or even avoided.

To sum up, product managers need to adhere to two principles throughout the product lifecycle:

• User experience first

• Direction is more important than speed

Five, KPI

The word KPI should be familiar in the Internet industry, because it is the core performance indicator for the assessment of a product or a position. In plain words, it is the indicator for the evaluation of a product or job. Product managers are responsible for creating products that attract users and ultimately achieve commercialization goals, so their KPIs usually focus on traffic and business value.

5.1 traffic

The flow level is easy to understand and easy to measure. For example, how many people should register for the launch of the product, how many people should participate in the activity at least and so on. Common indicators of Internet products are:

• Number of registered users: the total number of registered users of the product, which is not significant due to the low threshold of registration

• Active Users: Users who use the product frequently and need to eliminate duplication, such as monthly active users (MAUs)

• Churn: The number of users who have been active or have abandoned a product after registering

• User retention rate: The ratio of the number of valid users to the total number of users per unit time. The larger the better

• Churn rate: The ratio of lost users to the total number of users per unit time. The smaller the better

In addition to the above user indicators, there are also some common visitor indicators for web products:

• PV: the number of page views, regardless of whether the page is repeated, whether the load is complete

• UV: number of unique visitors, which is more significant than PV when repetition is removed

• Bounce rate: The percentage of visits to a site that leave after viewing only one page

• Exit rate: The percentage of the number of page visits that a user exits from the page as a percentage of the total number of page visits that enter the page

• Average Access duration: The average length of time a user takes to open and close a web page during a visit

• PR: Website ranking, mainly through SEO optimization to improve

For example, Baidu statistics can reflect the quality and activity of a website:

As for how to improve the relevant KPIs at the traffic level, the above answer has been given — to improve the user experience of the core demand, and there is no more explanation.

5.2 Commercial Value

We know that every product needs to position its commercial value and use its commercial value to bring benefits to the company, which is the most basic business model of Internet companies. Due to the characteristics of small steps and rapid iterations of Internet products, most companies pursue the rapid accumulation of users at the initial stage of their products, while ignoring their important commercial value, which ultimately leads to product failure.

Therefore, product managers should not only pay attention to the KPI of user traffic, but also pay attention to the KPI of product business value. Common KPI of business value of Internet products are as follows:

• ROI: Return on investment, the ratio of profit to investment in a project over a period of time, the bigger the better, is a very important metric

• ARPU: average revenue per user. The more high-end users, the higher the value, but it does not mean that the higher the value, the greater the profit. Cost also needs to be considered

• AD display/click/conversion rate: common examples are CPL, CPM, CPC, etc. The higher the value, the higher the product activity

However, it is easy to make such indicators for some e-commerce products, such as common ones:

• GMV: The total number of transactions on a website over a period of time, usually referred to as the volume of transactions (order value) on an e-commerce site

• Sales volume: As the name suggests, is the best indicator of how good a product or website is

• Repeat purchase rate: refers to the number of repeated purchases of products or services by users, reflecting user loyalty. The higher the value, the better

It is worth noting that although KPI serves as an indicator to assess products or positions, on the contrary, product managers can analyze and optimize products through kpIs related indexes, so the role of KPI must not be ignored.

conclusion

So far my basic understanding of product manager entry has been summarized, but this is only the first step in a long journey. More hard power is needed to go from zero to one. As I am in the process of transformation, MANY concepts are understood from my own perspective, and lack of practical experience is a big regret of this paper.

For example, when reviewing the paper, the author found that the definition of product manager was divided into four levels: production, product, economics and management, corresponding to the four stages of product production, tasting, operation and sorting. His cognition is more in-depth and thorough than this paper, and he benefits a lot.

For example, in the article “AI Products from 0 to 1, See the Training of product Managers”, I explained how product managers exercise their soft power with personal experience, which gave me a lot of help.

Therefore, two summaries of product manager workflow and ability model from Qidian College are attached at the end of the paper, on the one hand, for my own collection and study to make up for my lack of professional knowledge, and on the other hand, to supplement the defects of this paper.

References:

Shi Jinghui — AI products from 0 to 1, see product manager’s cultivation

Start with Robert Katz’s competency model: What should a product manager competency model be?

Product Complete Workflow: 25 things a Product Manager must Do