It may surprise you, but as a real post-00s generation, I have been working as a product manager for 2 years.

The year of 2021 will soon be over. Here I am going to make a phased summary of my work in the past two years, and hope that my growth experience can provide some reference for friends who are about to or are changing careers.

Stage 1: Develop basic skills

Generally speaking, this is how new people come. At this stage, the work of product manager is mostly at the execution level, basically you are in a passive state of receiving “second-hand requirements”, and your daily work is to draw prototypes and write PRDS.

To be honest, this part of the job is not difficult, it is a necessary skill to get started, so it is important that you lay a solid foundation at this stage. Here’s how I built the foundation:

Master the necessary skills

Prototypes and PRD documents are the primary vehicle for product managers to communicate ideas to other departments, and there’s nothing better than a clear prototype and complete requirements document for designers and developers!

For novices, I suggest that you practice by pushing back the prototype of an existing App, which is not only easy to use, but also helps you exercise logical thinking about products.

Since our company is engaged in e-commerce products, I spent three days copying three sets of e-commerce prototypes after I joined the company. In the process of copying, I broke up and reconstructed the product pages, and completed the construction of pages one by one by dragging components and ICONS by myself, which was very helpful for me to know and understand the business logic of competing products.

For example, the above is the prototype that I copied from Hema Xiansheng App. I copied about 20 pages in total. After drawing, I not only became more proficient in using the tool, but also systematically sorted out the business logic and interaction pages of e-commerce products.

In addition to the prototype, the PRD document is also a key point to learn. In the trend of agile development, traditional documents of dozens or hundreds of pages are no longer suitable for the current pace of development. I suggest that you try to embed PRD documents in prototypes, and add text notes directly next to the prototypes to explain requirements and describe function points, which is more convenient and efficient.

For example, in Copy RP, a prototyping tool I use a lot, I simply drag and drop the “sticky note” component from the component library and fill it out to make it look like a comment. And it presets a wealth of components and ICONS that you can double-click or drag onto the palette to start prototyping without downloading component packs. I have been using this tool for two years, and the comprehensive experience is relatively good among similar products.

All in all, smart choice of some suitable tools can help you quickly master the basic skills, and good tools can let you set aside more time to think about the logic behind the product!

Phase two: Proactively excavate and manage projects

After the first stage, I believe you have some basic understanding of the product, such as user research, competitive product analysis, product thinking, etc. In the second stage, the product manager will gradually start to be responsible for the functional design of a specific module in the product, which needs to be optimized to improve user experience.

As far as I am concerned, I am responsible for the company’s electricity project – “my” module, including login registration, my orders, browsing history, help with customer service, Settings, and other functions, I have to do is to ensure that requirements to achieve smooth iteration, the experience of ascension, the product at the same time, still clear logic and structure is reasonable, and not be a loophole in the business.

1. Change from passive to active

At this stage, you’re no longer the guy who just did what was assigned to you, and you need to move from being passive to being proactive.

Because you need to find ways to directly mine demands from users, through user research, user feedback, data panel analysis, competitive product analysis and other ways to obtain, compared to the first stage, now you are in the hands of “first-hand demand”.

The product manager then needs to screen these “primary needs” to determine what the real needs of users are, and select the best to eliminate the false and retain the true. After that, a series of operations such as reviewing the screened requirements, communicating with the technical staff about the research and development time, setting priorities and scheduling will be carried out to ensure the landing of the requirements.

In the process, digging deep into what your users really want will help you define your needs and develop your broader product thinking skills.

2. Overall project management

For most companies, project management is the responsibility of the product manager. In this case, the product manager is looking at the whole picture, rather than one requirement or feature.

If the product manager needs to properly coordinate resources and clearly know whether each feature is progressing as expected, it needs to work with designers, developers, and testers to move the project forward.

In the process of promoting your project, you need to communicate with everyone in a timely manner, which can effectively develop a soft skill for product managers — communication skills.

Specific communication skills vary from person to person, so I won’t repeat them here.

The last

For the position of product manager, the more comprehensive knowledge is often conducive to the integration of team capabilities and advantages. Recently, I have also been making up for some basic Web coding, and HAVE read several books: “HTML Development Guide”, “CSS+DIV from The Beginning to master”, “Javascript Development Complete”. Learning basic technical knowledge can also help me communicate with developers more smoothly, and strive to let me pass the second stage as soon as possible!

Set a flag: I hope I can be promoted to the company’s product group leader next year, come on!!