I have always believed that learning new knowledge must be purposeful. It must be used to make us better, or it must have an invisible impact on our lives. In other words, it must bring either material benefits or spiritual benefits. The same is true for learning technology. What determines whether you should learn it is not whether others are learning it, but whether learning the technology is useful to you.For product managers , whether to learn technology and what kind of technology to learn depends first on whether learning will be helpful to their daily product work.1. Do product managers need to learn technology?Any Internet product will go through a process from requirement definition to solution design to coding implementation and then to debugging and error correction.From the perspective of product work role division, product managers are mainly responsible for demand definition and solution design, technical personnel are responsible for coding implementation, and debugging and error correction are generally the responsibility of testers and operations personnel. The question of whether product managers should learn technology arises in the process of product managers determining requirements and designing solutions. Whether technical logic is involved, and in the process of handing over the communication to technology for coding after the requirements and designing solutions are determined, can understanding technology improve our communication efficiency?1. Is technical logic involved in the process of determining requirements and solutions?The technical logic mentioned here does not refer to the language used to implement the requirements, but rather refers to the technical logic beneath the product presentation layer.For example, if user feedback requires adding a search function, the product manager’s work at this time is not just to simply produce a prototype and design drawings. Excellent product managers often first think about:
Where do we need to get data from to build the index?
Which data should be used as the target's hit text?
How to deal with these text weights?
Do you need to add non-text data as the basis for sorting?
How to arrange these non-text data?
What is the timeliness of this search?
Is there a need for incremental messaging?
If the incremental message mechanism is used, will the development cycle of the data source and search engine be extended?After these issues are clarified, the last thing to do is to produce the requirements document, prototype and design drawings. In this case, product personnel are required to understand technology in order to understand the technical logic related to the requirements and avoid unreasonable requirements.Requirement documents, prototypes and design drawings are the media for expressing the needs of product managers. What is more important for product managers is to design the correct product operation logic in the right way, and then hand over the design plan to technical personnel for implementation, rather than simply telling the technical staff that I want to implement a certain requirement. Behind the seemingly superficial product requirement, there are multiple levels of operation logic involved.2. Can understanding technology improve our work efficiency?We often see some technical personnel complaining online, and most of the reasons are that either the product requirements logic proposed by the product manager does not work, or the product manager is unable to clearly explain the specific product requirements.The role of a product manager is to distill user needs into product logic and explain it to technical personnel. The job of technical personnel is to translate the product logic described by the product manager into a language that computers can understand so that computers can implement it. In the process of communicating product needs, product personnel are required to clearly and accurately convey product needs to technical personnel while ensuring that the product logic is correct. At this time, if the product manager understands technology, he can think about problems from a technical perspective, and will also take into account both technical logic and product logic when communicating, thereby improving communication efficiency.Technology is the foundation for product realization. Once you understand the boundaries of a technology, you will no longer make unrealistic demands, and the R&D engineers working with you will be more willing to cooperate with you. Therefore, for product managers, technology should also be a general course.2. After deciding to learn technology, what technology should product managers learn?Product practitioners at different stages learn different things:1. Students who are already working on productsFor a student who is already in a specific position responsible for a certain product, learning technology at this time often has two purposes. One is the need of daily work, and the other is to improve one's own ability. If it is a work need, you can refer to the following methods. If you are seeking improvement, please continue reading below.Work related:
Understand what technologies your product requires
Clarify the relationship between several required technologies
Understand the basic logic of each of these technologies
Use product logic to deduce technical logic, and then use technical logic to reverse deduce product logic
For students who are already engaged in product work, learning technology does not require you to be able to write code, but to understand the technical logic behind the product, what the technology can be used for, how to better integrate technology to realize your ideas for the product, and be able to evaluate the cost of technology implementation from a technical perspective when making demands.2. Students who are preparing to work in product fieldThe job requirements for a product manager do not require knowledge of technology. What is more important is whether one has user thinking and clear logical ability. Having a technical background will be a plus but not a decisive factor. Technical logic can be learned in daily work. Of course, if you decide to work in the Internet field, you must at least know some professional terms, such as cache, JS script, Ajax, database, stored procedure, BI, etc. What exactly are these terms? If you want to learn some technical knowledge, please focus on the following.The technology we usually talk about mainly refers to development technology, which is divided into front-end technology and back-end technology. Students who want to become product managers can learn some front-end related knowledge. Front-end related knowledge focuses relatively on front-end presentation, unlike the back-end which particularly pursues performance. The front-end has its own design rules, which is of great help to product design.Front-end technology: HTML/CSS/ JavaScriptHTML: Hypertext Markup Language, an application under the standard generalized markup language, mainly used for the presentation layer. It is best for product managers to understand HTML, note that it is not HTML5. Of course, it would be better if they understand H5. HTML is the most basic web scripting language. Sometimes when you don’t understand the logic of a page, you can right-click properties—"View page source code" to take a look.CSS (Cascading Style Sheets): A computer language used to express the style of documents such as HTML or XML (a subset of Standard Generalized Markup Language). When learning, focus on understanding the CSS box model, selector types, positioning modes, etc.JavaScript: A directly interpreted scripting language that is a dynamically typed, weakly typed, prototype-based language with built-in support for types. Its interpreter is called JavaScript engine, which is part of the browser and is widely used as a client-side scripting language.Front-end language learning can start with these three languages. Front-end programming languages pay more attention to the presentation effect, which needs to be paid attention to in the product design stage; the display of front-end pages cannot be separated from the support of servers and databases, which requires the use of back-end technology.Backend technology: php/python/javaPHP: is a powerful server-side scripting language for creating dynamic and interactive sites. PHP is free and widely used. It is a popular back-end language nowadays.Python: Python is not a special language and has a wide range of applications. It is currently commonly used in scripts in operation and maintenance, and website development. Learning Python can significantly improve data analysis capabilities. For data analysis, sometimes you may need various Excel tables and various formulas. Even when the amount of data is too large, it will hinder data analysis. With Python, you only need to do some basic command lines to easily obtain relevant data, which can greatly improve work efficiency.Java: An object-oriented programming language that can be used to write cross-platform applications. It is widely used in PCs, data centers, mobile phones and the Internet. Students who are interested in pursuing Android-related careers can learn it.Whether it is a front-end or back-end language, you only need to know the technical logic. If you want to learn in depth, typing some code is a good way.3. All those who are working as product managers or want to work in product managementIn addition to the front-end and back-end languages, whether you are already working in product development or preparing to work in product development, you should understand some commonly used technologies. Understanding these technologies can greatly facilitate the development of daily product work.Mobile products:
Understand the difference between dynamic and static languages,
Understand what SDK and packaging are;
Understand what is the MVC structural model;
Understand how to distinguish between front-end and back-end in pure technology;
Understand what an API is;
Understand the common database types and their advantages and disadvantages;
Understand the annual WWDC and Google I/O.
PC products:
Understand the basic Box model concept,
Understand DOM concepts;
Understand the concept of synchronous/asynchronous;
Understand the commonly used front-end frameworks, and know their respective advantages and disadvantages and applicable environments;
Understand the impact of the differences between mobile and PC environments on front-end development.
Project side:
Understand what is build integration,
Know what problems SVN and Git are used to solve;
Try to learn how to use git through practice, and even understand git-flow;
Understand common continuous integration tools ;
Understand the publishing process.
After determining whether product managers should learn technology and what technology to learn, I will not go into details about the following learning channels . If you want to know, please leave me a message.Finally, I would like to emphasize that product managers should avoid in-depth research on technology, because it is easy to start from the perspective of a technical engineer, which will often lead to misunderstandings when designing products. In addition, even if you have some understanding of technology, you should respect the opinions of technical personnel when communicating with them. Every profession has its own expertise, and product managers cannot deviate from their professional positioning. The most important thing is to understand user psychology, user needs, and market demand.
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The author of this article @王豫强 is compiled and published by (Qinggua Media). Please indicate the author information and source when reprinting!
