Always wondering: What are the advantages of being a product manager who can write code? Is it necessary?
In the process of running, I finally hold back a relatively acceptable answer.
1. Persuasive
When you reach a certain height, the current side is confused and unknown, when you are making exploratory products, when your technology is not clear about the product logic you want or you are fooled to say that this demand cannot be realized, when you can only touch the stone to explore, You can also use technical language to describe your ideas and product logic, draw flow diagrams, draw UML class diagrams, write pseudocode and other technical language. If you have to, you can write it yourself.
This combination of product and technical capabilities is likely to be more persuasive, which makes it easier to persuade the team to move forward with you in a real-world corporate environment, and less likely to lead to abortive attempts that failed to move forward.
2. The control force
If you have some understanding of the technology, it is more likely to be more accurate to arrange the r&d cycle, manage the R&D process, and control the product evolution rhythm when conducting requirements assessment.
In addition, in the process of team coordination communication costs, coordination costs will be lower, your technology to match what you expected probability will be a few taller, technical personnel and product managers work out as a result of the cognitive understanding deviation between with the probability of huge difference between expected demand will be lower, not to serious rework adjustment to the project schedule delay, So as to ensure that it can go online as expected.
Internet product research and development is a comprehensive team operation of the big project, in the commercial competition of Internet products, the degree of homogeneity is usually relatively high, sometimes “fast step” can decide a lot of things.
3. The leadership
Because you don’t have good experience to copy or refer to what you are doing, many things and ideas have not been successfully tested.
How can you ensure that you are leading the project team in the right direction in a chaotic exploration environment? It’s not enough to have product capability at this point. It tests a combination of technical understanding, product understanding and business insight.
In addition, in the process of product business evolution, you can lead your technical team to make some good or even advanced technical attempts, so that your technical team can achieve product functions and meet the needs of business development at the same time, but also achieve technical growth and success. There are ways that product managers and programmers can work together.
4. Try some prior products through technical means
Through technical means, the ability to think and implement some prior product trials to reduce trial and error costs of exploratory products and their impact on users is very valuable in the product evolution process, especially for products with large user volume.
Soft skills are not easy or costly to acquire for a product manager without technical background.
Similarly, it is not enough for a good engineering programmer to focus only on technical implementation, but also to have an understanding of the product, the business, and otherwise the research programmer.
A good product manager is more than a product manager, and a good engineering programmer is more than a programmer.
China’s Internet industry, software industry has had a savage growth, also had a copy of The Times, seeking high quality development and continuous innovation in the process, I hope we can more outstanding product managers and excellent engineering programmer, for China’s large engine rapidly increase, the better and faster recovery.