Netease has materials | business driven by project management practice

The definition of “business” in Wikipedia is: “An enterprise uses scientific methods and production processes to produce products and services that can be delivered to users and thus bring benefits to the enterprise.” In my personal understanding, “business driving” requires the following key elements:

1 value orientation

Value orientation means that revenue and cost are taken as the key drivers. Revenue can be quantifiable key indicators such as income, number of users, exposure and spread. Meanwhile, cost input is measured to weigh the final value output.

2 Rapid change

The market industry is often rapidly changing, and under this premise, projects often need rapid iteration, rapid trial-and-error verification, rapid adjustment and rapid decision making. Therefore, speed is also a key factor.

3. Focus on feedback

Focusing on feedback means that the market and users need to verify the product or service, so as to form a closed loop of goal -> output -> feedback -> improvement to ensure a virtuous circle of business.

Business development generally goes through the following processes:

Initial stage:

In the initial stage, the business logic needs to be verified quickly, and the business model needs to be gradually adjusted and clarified.

Development stage:

Often through a large amount of capital investment and a large amount of promotion and operation, quickly open the market to improve the market share;

Maturity stage:

It is necessary to further refine operations, improve efficiency and save costs, while gradually optimizing and improving. Risk management is often an important aspect.

Decline stage:

Transformation and innovation are often required, or rapid roll-out to market as conditions dictate.

According to the different stages of business development, projects in different stages often have different practices in project management. The netease Youliao project currently served by the author is in its initial stage. There are a certain number of competing products in the market, and the market industry is changing rapidly. The business model of the product itself needs to be verified. In the context of this project, the author shares some project management concerns and project practices for your reference.

Project objectives

For business-driven projects, the target business is the most critical driving factor. Whether the target is clear and reasonably disassembled, whether team members are clear about the overall target and individual target, and how the adjustment and change of target are transmitted to the team, etc., have a crucial impact on the project.

Smart principles (S=Specific, M=Measurable, A=Attainable, R=Relevant, T= time-based) can be used to set project objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and time-bound.

Objective setting can be top-down, bottom-up or a combination of the two. In netease Youliao Project, project management helps the team manage objectives through the following project practices:

1. Goal setting

At every stage of the target (e.g., annual), the project manager will be core members of the organization goal discussion, the meeting agenda as follows: the core members of the synchronous this stage goal programming – > project director synchronous overall target planning — > parts & overall goal contrast, weigh, discussion, adjustment – > overall goals and objectives decomposition.

2. Goal planning

After the overall objective and objective decomposition are clear, the project manager will set a general template, promote each core member to make a reasonable plan for the target they claim, and give timely feedback on the support needed and possible risks. It mainly includes the following aspects:

3. Phase synchronization

At the end of each goal phase (e.g., the end of the quarter), the project manager will organize the goal summary meeting of the core members to form a closed-loop of goal – implementation – feedback – adjustment. The main agenda of the meeting is: each core member synchronizes the achievement of the objectives at this stage –> Project management synchronizes the achievement of the overall objectives at this stage –> The project director summarizes and gives feedback at this stage, and makes clear target suggestions for the next stage –> each core member carries out target planning and dynamic adjustment for the next stage.

Industry information

As the market industry changes rapidly, it is necessary to keep abreast of the latest developments of the industry and competitive products, and make rapid response and adjustment. In the actual project process, the support from the following aspects was obtained and promoted:

1. Application and research support

The user research colleagues will synchronize the latest industry information to the whole project team by email every week, so that all project members can get the latest industry information;

2. Strategic support

Colleagues in the strategy Department will share the latest trends of competitive products, specific research and give strategic suggestions once every two weeks, laying a foundation for the following business direction.

3. Product research

Product colleagues will share relevant research results from time to time, focusing on the advantages and gaps compared with competitive products, exploration of new directions, market verification and feedback, etc., which will help to clarify the business model and improve the core competitiveness of products.

Focus on data

Data reflect the current actual state, and different roles need to pay attention to data from different perspectives. Through data analysis, current gaps and problems can be fed back for continuous improvement and improvement.

In netease Youliao project, project data is presented and synchronized by NETEASE Meili, a BI analysis tool. The data is divided into different aspects, such as core data, user data, operation data, content data, etc., and synchronized to different relevant roles at different frequencies (such as daily, weekly, monthly, etc.). Meanwhile, relevant colleagues will periodically/irregularly synchronize relevant conclusions of data analysis. The following is an example of a data report:

Rapid adjustment

As businesses often change rapidly, it is also important for teams to adjust and respond quickly to changes. In order to cope with business changes, certain adjustments have been made in the project. Examples are as follows:

1. Release cycle adjustment

Due to the constant emergence of urgent customer needs, the original 3-4 weekly iterations were changed to one monthly iteration and two release Windows. Urgent requirements can be placed in a small release in the mid-month release window, and planning requirements can be placed in a large release at the end of the month to address rapid business requirements. Subsequent release cycles also shorten, requiring teams to prepare and improve in areas such as continuous integration and automated testing.

2. Adjust the station meeting mode

Due to the increasing size of the team and the need to synchronize information on the business side as much as possible, the site will be expanded from the original R&D team to the business team (product, marketing, operations, etc.). At present, the site meetings of netease Youliao Project are mainly divided into: site meetings of business core, site meetings of r&d module leaders, and site meetings of r&d module teams. The main goal is to synchronize relevant information and risks to relevant teams as quickly and timely as possible.

3. Customer support adjustment

As more and more customers are connected, customer support has become an important aspect to feedback customer problems and improve customer experience. In order to improve the efficiency and experience of customer support, the following adjustments were made, including clarifying the responsibilities of customer support roles, developing customer support procedures, recording and summarizing customer problems/incidents, and training customer communication and service skills.

conclusion

Project management needs to adjust measures according to the actual situation of the project, but the actual project is often complicated, which puts forward higher requirements and greater challenges to the project manager, I hope to discuss and grow together with you.

In this paper, the author