抠细节Sweating the Details
最近接触到很多产品经理，发现他们都把太多的时间抠在产品的设计细节方面。说具体些，就是把产品的交互设计和UI设计看的太重，几乎大部分的时间都花在设计和开发上了，而忽视了产品本身应该重点考虑的地方。而很多产品相关的网站，讨论和分享的也太多是交互和设计相关的内容。这样的局面，一方面是国内产品圈的乱象造成的，一方面又会误导新人以为做产品就是做设计的。所以今天和大家再次讨论产品经理到底是干什么的，产品经理应该关注的重点应该是什么。
说到产品经理，title叫什么的并不重要，我们最早所认定以及现在所期望的产品经理角色其实就是对一个产品负根本责任的管理者。比如说老板是对公司负责，设计师是对他的设计负责，那产品经理就是对某个产品线/产品/或者是某一产品下的部分（可以看成子产品）负根本责任。那怎么个负责法呢？就是你需要根据上头的公司战略，协调多方资源，推动这个产品达到计划中的目标。
那产品经理应该如何做呢？具体一些的职责又是什么？在说这个之前先想梳理一下大家的思路：有的东西是产品经理的份内工作，是职责，而还有些东西只是产品需要了解的一些知识。比如我们都说PM需要了解一些交互，需要了解一些运营，但是并不代表PM就是做交互的。任何职业在扎实做好本专业工作的基础上，对其他专业的知识和上下游知识的了解学习都是多多益善的事情。但是不可粉末倒置。不能因为迷恋前端代码而变成了追求代码效率的人，不能因为迷恋UI的美观而变成追求视觉效果的人。产品经理还是产品，产品经理根本需要做好的应该是：
1，产品战略和发展的规划
比如老板说公司3年内要上市，那么就需要一些能推动公司上市的产品，那么产品经理就需要知道，这个产品的战略目标是推动上市。产品经理需要根据这个目标，规划产品在不同时间，不同阶段应该如何做才能推动公司上市。产品经理需要考虑将产品带入哪个方向，哪个领域，才能获得推动上市的资本。产品经理根据这些思路，决定了产品的很多大是大非的问题，比如目标市场是什么，目标用户是什么，盈利模式是什么，甚至产品的气质和风格等等…
要做好这件事情，产品经理得了解市场，了解竞争对手，有精明的商业头脑，这些能力不亚于CEO，也不是刚毕业初出茅庐的人就能做好的，但是大家都需要始终的朝着这个方向学习和努力。
2，需求的挖掘和分析
当产品经理将公司的战略转化为产品的目标后，就需要从中挖掘需求。这些需求不光是来自用户的，还可能是市场需求，公司内部的需求。产品经理不但需要想可能会有哪些需求能满足产品的目标，还要深刻的分析哪些需求应该做，哪些需求不应该做，这些需求优先级是什么，应该如何做。这就好像是在矿山挖石头选材料，最终达到建立一个宏伟城堡的过程，我们管它叫需求的挖掘和分析。
现在的互联网产品关注用户多一些，所以产品经理面对和处理用户需求也相对多一些。挖掘需求，并不是说发现了什么就做什么，现在是一个需求多资源少的时代，产品经理要清楚的了解用户是否真的要这个需求，什么情况下要，是否能为产品带来好处，如何权衡和评价优先级等。否则你给了下游不靠谱的需求，人家很可能在背后骂你傻逼，现在大家也潜移默化的把“对需求的挖掘和分析能力”作为一个产品经理是否专业的评判标准。
所以要做好这些，产品要了解用户，了解市场，能够挖掘数据，能够观察竞品，能够有很强的的逻辑分析能力及自我管理能力等等，太多了学问了。
3，推动产品目标的实现
推动产品就是指产品经理完成了前期的规划和设计，那么需要利用各方资源把这个事情推动下去从而实现，否则就会一直停留在想法上。要做好前面2个不难，顶多是自己的事情，但是要推动产品却要求很强的团队合作管理能力。大家都知道产品是没有实权的CEO，说具体些就是在大部分公司，PM是没有直接的手下资源的，用研设计开发都是属于其他部门的公共资源，PM不但要去争取这些资源，还要协调他们同心协力的完成目标，这就是产品经理管理者的一面。
可能说完之后有的PM朋友就比较迷茫了，产品战略似乎很遥远的事情，这不是老板或者总监做的吗？我们好像就是在做一些画原型图之类的设计工作，这又是怎么回事？
其实刚刚说的产品经理职责和能力，是一个比较严谨的定义和理想的情况，现在的国情是不同的企业，对不同的能力的产品经理的要求都不一样的。前面也说了无关乎头衔叫什么，在大公司各个类型的职位划分的很明确，不同等级的产品做得事情也不一样，在小公司可能老板就是PM（因为可能一个公司就一个产品），而招的PM只是需要协助老板画原型图的设计而已，还有一些跨界的人，因为公司分工不是很明确所以产品，交互和用研都做。我们有的时候也说乔布斯算产品经理，张小龙也算产品经理，只要真正做到了上面说的几条都可以是产品经理，这些比较混乱情况都不影响一个产品经理本身属性以及应该具备的能力，只是你没有做到而已。
但是还是不得不说产品经理是有阶段的，不同能力和等级的产品经理，对上面三条职责的关注重点也不一样：
新手阶段：头衔大部分叫产品专员，产品设计，产品经理
这一阶段的人，其实关注推动产品目标实现的多一些。在大公司，往往会有一个高级的产品经理带上几个新手，这些新手就类似于助理，主要帮助导师写写文档，与开发设计沟通，收集材料观察数据，收集反馈和效果什么的，通过这样的形式来培养产品感觉。对于很多新手来说，不可能一开始就对需求有很好的感觉和把控能力，也更别提产品战略了。因为他们与其他部门和资源的人打交道多一些，所以会需要了解交互，了解设计，了解一些开发的内容，但这些都是为了更好的传递与沟通，推动大家一起把事情做成的手段。
老手阶段：头衔通常就是产品经理
老手阶段的产品经理最大的特定就是，对需求拥有一定的决策权，关注的是需求的挖掘和分析方面。老手的产品经理是要决定什么要做，什么不做的，要经常思考用户喜欢什么，什么有好的盈利空间，而不光是想，还要拿出强有力的说服力，去说服老板，说服其他部门的头头给予资源。老手们有一定经验和感觉，有很好的逻辑思维和沟通技能，还具备一定的领导力，现在大部分产品经理就处在这个阶段。
老大阶段：头衔可能是产品经理，产品总监或CEO
当然老大阶段就是关注产品战略和规划的，在小公司可能老大就是老板，老板就是最大的产品经理。但是在一些大公司比如腾讯，那么多产品马总是不可能关注的过来的，还有各种行政事务，商务事务等大大小小的事，所以都是分化给产品总监产品总裁之类的人来带领一个产品。说明白些就是进入老大阶段，就是对这个产品有了很大的权利，当然责任也非常的大。产品的方方面面都需要关注和处理，但是最重要的还是将产品引导至正确的方向，是这个产品的掌舵人。老大阶段就是管理者，有自己的团队很多东西都是下放交给大家去完成，当然其中要领导好团队。做到这一点，靠的不光是能力和经验，机遇和手段都很重要。
很多公司也许不会分的这么细，只有一个等级的产品经理。但是你也应该知道，你所拥有的能力强弱决定了你能做好其中哪一阶段的职责，不断地让自己学习和提升从而争取到更多对产品的主导权是所有产品经理都期望努力的方向。
说到这里大家可能对产品经理这一职位又有了一次全面的认识和了解，当然真正牛逼的产品经理是早就已经看透且不介意这些细节的，希望写的这些能够为很多处于迷茫和苦逼甚至还不知情的“产品经理”们提供一些帮助，其中一些细节和具体的方法论就请大家自行了解吧。
Lately I have been meeting a lot of product managers, and I find that they all sink far too much time into fussing over the design details of their products. To put it concretely: they weigh interaction design and UI design much too heavily, spending nearly all their time on design and development while neglecting the things a product actually needs them to think hardest about. And on many product-related websites, what gets discussed and shared is likewise mostly interaction and design content. This state of affairs is partly the doing of the chaos in the domestic product scene, and partly it misleads newcomers into believing that doing product means doing design. So today let’s talk once more about what a product manager actually does, and where a product manager’s focus really ought to lie.
When it comes to product managers, what the title says hardly matters. The product manager role as we first understood it, and as we still hope it to be, is simply the manager who bears ultimate responsibility for a product. The boss answers for the company, a designer answers for his designs; the product manager, then, bears ultimate responsibility for a product line / a product / or one part of a product (think of it as a sub-product). And what does bearing responsibility look like? It means that, following the company strategy handed down from above, you coordinate resources from every side and push the product to reach its planned goals.
So how should a product manager go about it? What are the concrete duties? Before getting into that, let me first straighten out the thinking here: some things are a product manager’s proper work, their duties, while other things are merely knowledge a product person should be familiar with. We all say a PM needs to know some interaction design, needs to know some operations, but that does not make the PM the one doing interaction design. In any profession, once you have done your own specialty solidly, learning about other specialties and the fields upstream and downstream of you is all to the good. But you must not put the cart before the horse. You cannot become a chaser of code efficiency because you fell in love with front-end code, or a chaser of visual effects because you fell in love with pretty UI. A product manager is still about product, and what a product manager fundamentally has to do well is:
- Planning the product’s strategy and development
Say the boss declares the company will go public within 3 years; then it needs products that can push the company toward that listing, and the product manager needs to know that this product’s strategic goal is to drive the listing. Working from this goal, the product manager plans what the product should do at different times, in different stages, to push the company toward going public. The product manager has to consider which direction, which field to steer the product into in order to earn the capital that drives the listing. Along these lines of thought, the product manager settles many of the product’s make-or-break questions: what the target market is, who the target users are, what the revenue model is, even the product’s temperament and style, and so on…
To do this well, a product manager has to understand the market, understand the competition, and have a shrewd head for business; these abilities are no lesser than a CEO’s, and they are not something a fresh graduate just out of the gate can manage, but they are the direction all of us need to keep learning and striving toward.
- Unearthing and analyzing needs
Once the product manager has turned company strategy into product goals, needs have to be dug out of them. These needs come not only from users; they may also be market needs, or needs from inside the company. The product manager must not only imagine which needs might serve the product’s goals, but analyze deeply which needs should be built, which should not, what their priorities are, and how they should be done. It is like quarrying stone in a mine and selecting materials, all toward the eventual raising of a magnificent castle; this is what we call unearthing and analyzing needs.
Today’s internet products pay somewhat more attention to users, so product managers face and handle user needs relatively more. Unearthing needs does not mean building whatever you happen to find. This is an era of many needs and few resources, and the product manager must understand clearly whether users truly want a thing, under what circumstances they want it, whether it can benefit the product, how to weigh and rank priorities, and so on. Otherwise you hand flaky requirements downstream, and those people will very likely be calling you an idiot behind your back. By now, almost without anyone noticing, “the ability to unearth and analyze needs” has become the yardstick for judging whether a product manager is professional.
So to do all this well, a product person must understand users, understand the market, be able to mine data, be able to study competing products, have strong logical analysis and self-management, and on and on; there is a great deal of learning in it.
- Driving the product’s goals to realization
Driving the product means that once the product manager has finished the early planning and design, they must draw on resources from every side to push the thing forward until it is realized; otherwise it stays forever an idea. Doing the first two well is not hard; at most it is your own affair. But driving a product demands very strong teamwork and management skills. Everyone knows the product manager is a CEO without real power; concretely, in most companies the PM has no resources reporting directly to them, and user research, design, and development are all shared resources belonging to other departments. The PM must not only fight for these resources but coordinate them into pulling together toward the goal. This is the manager side of the product manager.
Having heard all this, some PM friends may feel rather lost: product strategy sounds like a faraway matter, isn’t that what the boss or the director does? We seem to spend our days on design chores like drawing wireframes, so what is going on there?
In truth, the duties and abilities just described are a fairly strict definition, the ideal case. The reality of the moment is that different companies ask different things of product managers of different abilities. As said before, the title is beside the point. In big companies, every type of role is carved out clearly, and product people at different levels do different work; in a small company the boss may be the PM (since the company may have exactly one product), and the PM they hire is only there to help the boss with design work like drawing wireframes. There are also people who straddle roles: because the division of labor at their company is not very clear, they do product, interaction, and user research all at once. We sometimes say Jobs counts as a product manager, and Zhang Xiaolong counts as a product manager; anyone who truly does the things above can be a product manager. None of these muddled situations changes what a product manager inherently is or the abilities one ought to possess; it only means you have not gotten there yet.
Still, it has to be said that product managers come in stages, and PMs of different abilities and ranks weight the three duties above differently:
The novice stage: the title is usually product specialist, product designer, or product manager
People at this stage actually focus more on driving product goals to realization. In big companies, a senior product manager will often take on a few novices, and these novices are something like assistants: they mainly help their mentor write documents, communicate with development and design, gather material and watch the data, collect feedback and results, and through this cultivate a feel for product. Most novices cannot possibly start out with a fine feel for needs or a firm grip on them, never mind product strategy. Because they deal more with people from other departments and resources, they will need to understand interaction, understand design, and understand some of the development side, but all of that is in service of passing things along and communicating better, a means of pushing everyone to get the thing done together.
The veteran stage: the title is usually just product manager
The defining trait of a veteran-stage product manager is holding a measure of decision power over needs; their focus is the unearthing and analyzing of needs. Veteran PMs are the ones deciding what gets built and what does not; they must constantly think about what users like and where the good profit lies, and not merely think: they must produce forceful persuasion, convincing the boss, convincing the heads of other departments to grant resources. Veterans have a certain experience and feel, sound logical thinking and communication skills, and a measure of leadership. Most product managers today are at this stage.
The boss stage: the title may be product manager, product director, or CEO
The boss stage, naturally, is where one focuses on product strategy and planning. In a small company the boss-stage person may be the owner himself; the boss is the biggest product manager of all. But at big companies like Tencent, with so many products, there is no way Mr. Ma could watch over them all, on top of administrative affairs, business affairs, and matters great and small, so the work is parceled out to product directors, product presidents, and the like, each leading a product. To put it plainly, entering the boss stage means holding great power over the product, and of course very great responsibility. Every facet of the product needs your attention and handling, but the most important thing is guiding the product in the right direction; you are the one at its helm. The boss stage is a manager’s stage: you have your own team, and much gets delegated for everyone else to complete, though of course you must lead that team well. Getting here rests not only on ability and experience; opportunity and maneuvering matter greatly too.
Many companies may not slice things this finely, keeping only a single rank of product manager. But you should still know that the strength of your abilities decides which stage’s duties you can carry well, and that continually learning and improving so as to win more say over the product is the direction every product manager hopes to strive toward.
By this point you may have gained one more rounded understanding of what the product manager position is. The truly badass product managers, of course, saw through all this long ago and pay such details no mind. I hope what I have written offers some help to the many “product managers” out there who are lost, grinding bitterly away, or do not even know it yet; as for some of the finer details and the concrete methodologies, I will leave you to look into those yourselves.
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