游戏邦在:
杂志专栏:
gamerboom.com订阅到鲜果订阅到抓虾google reader订阅到有道订阅到QQ邮箱订阅到帮看

论述产品经理的工作内容和重要性

发布时间:2011-11-11 17:50:15 Tags:,,

游戏邦注:本文作者是Martin Eriksson,他任产品经理已有15年,曾在Monster、金融时报和Huddle等国际知名公司任职,目前担任Covestor的首席产品官。

很多人常问我什么是产品经理?他们做什么?来自哪里?他们为什么喜欢总是衣冠楚楚?

在著作《Inspired》中,Marty Cagan将产品经理一职形容为“发现有价值、可利用和行得通的产品”。同样,我将产品管理定义为业务、技术和用户体验的交叉点。优秀产品经理至少要对其中一方面有经验,同时要对三方面内容都怀有浓厚兴趣,且熟悉各个方面。

what is a product manager from gamesbrief.com

what is a product manager from gamesbrief.com

业务——产品管理首先属于商业活动,侧重最大化产品的商业价值。产品经理需专注于优化产品,实现业务目标,同时最大化投资回报。

技术——若你不知道如何创建内容,那么谈论创建什么就毫无意义。这并不意味着产品经理需要懂得编码,而是指要理解相关技术,最重要的是获悉所需付出的努力是做出正确决策的关键。这在敏捷制作过程尤其突出,此时产品经理同制作团队相处的时间要比其他人员多得多。

用户体验——产品经理代表用户的心声,需关注用户体验。这并不意味着产品经理得变成推销员,但你需要测试产品,同用户沟通,获得第一手反馈信息(游戏邦注:尤其是在开始阶段)。

产品经理到底管理什么?

为什么他们需要如此广泛的技能?因为角色本身非常宽泛和多变,你每天都需要运用这些技能。

首先是设定产品的目标,这需要不断调查市场、用户及他们所遇到的问题。你需要吸收大量的信息——客户反馈、网页分析的定量资料、调查报告、市场趋势和数据,你得把握市场和用户的所有情况,创造性地综合所有信息,定义产品的目标。

只要找准目标,你就能够在公司中进行宣传。你需要热衷于自己的产品。若你缺乏热情——那你就找错职位或没有找到合适的目标。你的成败及产品的成败取决于所有团队成员(从销售到开发者)是否都理解目标,对此怀有至少一点点的热情。

然后你就开始行动,着手创建可行计划,实现此目标。此逐步完善和反复制作的发展蓝图通过朝最终目标迈进让你向前更进一步。待到所有辛苦宣传都获得回报,团队就会积极致力于寻找更好的设计,更优的编码以及更合适的用户问题解决方案。

在以产品制作人身份同开发团队的频繁接触过程中,我们把握项目的许多细节内容——定义和更新产品内容,解决突然出现的问题,密切控制范围,这样你就能够即时发行作品。

产品最初诞生,此时你又需要再次腾出时间观察数据——观察用户如何使用产品,同他们谈论产品的相关内容,时时刻刻都和产品绑在一起。是否解决真正的问题?用户是否能够接触到产品?他们是否会花钱购买产品?

然后你又要再次重复同样的工作。这并不是瀑布效应——你并非一步步进行,而是同时着手多个项目或功能。常常在策略和战术中转换。

听起来很困难?

当然这是项艰难的工作,但你能够从中获得许多乐趣。你需要定义产品的本质,设计用户问题的解决方案,同公司所有成员合作,对公司成败取到至关重要的作用。我们可以说是科技领域里的无名英雄。(本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译,拒绝任何不保留版权的转载,如需转载请联系:游戏邦

What exactly is a product manager?

By Martin Eriksson

This is a guest post by Martin Eriksson, a product manager with 15 years experience in both corporate and start-up environments. He has worked for global brands such as Monster,Financial Times, Huddle and is currently the Chief Product Officer at Covestor. This post first appeared on MindTheProduct.

I often get asked what a product manager is. What do they do? Where do they come from? Why do they like sharpies so much?

In his book Inspired, Marty Cagan describes the job of the product manager as “to discover a product that is valuable, usable and feasible”. Similarly, I’ve always defined product management as the intersection between business, technology and user experience (hint – only a product manager would define themselves in a venn diagram). A good product manager must be experienced in at least one, passionate about all three, and conversant with practitioners in all.

Business – Product Management is above all else a business function, focused on maximising business value from a product. Product Managers should be obsessed with optimising a product to achieve the business goals while maximising return on investment. Sorry, this does mean that you are a suit – but you don’t have to wear one.

Technology – There’s no point defining what to build if you don’t know how it will get built. This doesn’t mean a Product Manager needs to be able to sit down and code but understanding the technology stack and most importantly understanding the level of effort involved is crucial to making the right decisions. This is even more important in an Agile world where Product Managers spend more time day to day with the development team than with anyone else inside the business.

User Experience – Last but not least the Product Manager is the voice of the user inside the business and must be passionate about the user experience. Again this doesn’t mean being a pixel pusher but you do need to be out there testing the product, talking to users and getting that feedback first hand – especially in a start-up.

Manage what exactly?

Why do you need this breadth of skills? Because the role itself is incredibly broad and varied and you’ll be using them every day.

It starts with setting a vision for the product, which requires you to research, research and research some more your market, your customer and the problem they have that you’re trying to solve. You have to assimilate huge amounts of information – feedback from clients, quantitative data from your web analytics, research reports, market trends and statistics – you need to know everything about your market and your customer, and then mix all that information with a healthy dose of creativity to define a vision for your product.

Once you have a vision, you have to spread the word in your business. Get dogmatic, evangelical even, about the utopia that is your product. And if you can’t get passionate about it – you’re in the wrong job or you didn’t come up with a very good vision. Your success, and that of your product, relies on every team member – from sales to developer – understanding that vision and being at least a little bit passionate about it as well.

And then you switch gears again and start building an actionable plan to reach that vision. A roadmap of incremental improvements and iterative development that take you step by faltering step closer to that final vision. This is when all that hard work preaching the good word pays off – and your team throw themselves into coming up with better designs, better code and better solutions to the customers problem.

Now we get really detail oriented, as you work day in, day out with the development team as a product owner – defining and iterating the product as you go, solving problems as they pop up and closely managing scope so you can get the product out on time.

The product is finally out there and suddenly you’re spending your days poring over data again – looking at how customers use the product, going out and talking to them about the product and generally eating, sleeping and breathing the product. Did you solve the right problem? Do your users get the product? Will they pay for the product?

And then you do it all over again. And these days its not a waterfall process – you’re not doing this step by step, you’re doing this for a dozen products or features at any one time, switching from strategy to tactics in the blink of an eye.

Sound tough?

Sure it’s a tough job but it’s just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on – certainly the most fun you’re going to get paid to do. You get to define the very essence of a product, design solutions to your customers’ problems, work with everyone in the business and play a very large part in your business’s success. We’re the unsung heroes of the tech world – or at least we’d like to think so…(Source:gamesbrief


上一篇:

下一篇: