Product Operations | The only difference between you and a product manager is experience and a business card!

The internal war between operations and products is being rehearsed every day. Don't let your voice spread outside. Speaking out is always your best side. Close the door, speak and curse slowly, think with your brain, and let time pass quickly. Don't be afraid of ruining the atmosphere. We are all a community with common interests under one company. Let's look into the distance from today.

The birth of 1,000 companies means that 1,000 companies are facing death. The employment trend created by entrepreneurship is full of passion and enthusiasm, and it flows all over the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. The temptation of external conditions is like a chocolate cake. The support of the government and the crazy VC era seem to be full of gold. Makers are shouting for the arrival of the next trend and looking forward to the post -BAT (Internet Big Three) era, while neglecting the polishing of their own products and user experience.

I have to say, startups have too much luck! Behind luck is not silently waiting for the opportunity, but repeated battles, starting from within, the operational and product wars that can never be escaped. Who has the final say?

Division of responsibilities between operations and product

First, let’s talk about the division of responsibilities between operations and products.

1. Operational responsibilities

• Need to plan promotion plan according to current products
• Need to produce content, mainly PGC (expert content production) and UGC (user content production)
• Need to guide and track users' product status and process steps to identify product/content deficiencies
• Carry the KPI of data, ensure the update of channels, promote user activity, strive to increase user stickiness and reduce churn rate.

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Of course, there are more subdivisions in operations positions, including product operations , content operations, new media operations , channel operations, user operations , event operations, etc. The more detailed responsibilities will also carry more specific work content.

2. Product Responsibilities

• Research the industry, users and market
• Design product logic, process, and main functional points
• Design product prototype (the initial form of the product, which can be handwritten or using prototyping tools , Mocha is recommended), and write product requirement document (PRD)
• Iterative management of each version, differentiate requirements and bugs by level, and make plans
• Become a connecting point between departments

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In addition to the above responsibilities, product managers also need to drive the work among departments. This is especially true in startups, which requires more coordination and answering of questions. This is why product managers seem to be sauntering around during the day but are working overtime late at night.

Of course, there will be many overlaps between operations and products, such as:

• Both need to start from data to analyze and improve products
• Meetings need to be initiated. Products drive operations, and operations also need to drive products.
• Products are the starting point of operations, and operations are also the starting point of products.
• Learn to exercise restraint and bring users what they really want, rather than adding unnecessary details

However, product managers in startups often have greater say. The company’s start is always product-driven, and all departments focus on products to radiate their strength, expand the market, lay the foundation for users, and grow. After reaching a certain scale, operations begin to have more say, and data makes everything simple.

Case: The war between product and operation

It is said that the part-time job industry is the next "Hundred Regiments War" (referring to the product war in the O2O food delivery industry in 2014), but the giants are still on the sidelines. Joining the market earlier has no advantages except for a deeper understanding of the industry and a summary of mistakes.

In that dark period (in the part-time job industry, it refers to the early period when there was no free and guaranteed platform and users mostly used QQ groups to find jobs without any guarantee), we needed to formulate product rules. The part-time job process that seems clear now took the team two months to finalize in 2013. The product's voice has existed since the beginning and is unshakable.

The eye of the storm of war is the requirements review meeting! ! !

In November 2015, three consecutive weeks of declining data made us nervous and we held emergency discussion meetings again and again. At that time, I was still attending the meeting as a product manager. Due to the adjustment of the operation structure, in addition to following up on product-related matters every day, I also needed to move between product operations and merchant operations (the part-time platform is a dual-end product for enterprises and students), and I almost collapsed several times.

The expansion of operations on both the merchant and user ends has reached a bottleneck. What’s worse, the public account push has reached a bottleneck. I began to notice that the technical department also had emotional fluctuations, and some people even began to complain: the function we spent so much time on turned out to be completely useless!

For a time, the company's atmosphere fell to the bottom, and there seemed to be no better solution except personnel redeployment. .

In addition to brand optimization, updated LOGO, new slogan, and too much energy was spent for a long time, and we lost our direction for a while!

Until someone said: Today's products are lifeless, why don't we package our own product features!

Soon, the battle drums for a lengthy requirements review will begin! Various suggestions for improvement were put forward at the meeting, including: placing two horizontal selection entrances on one page and three recommendation links at the bottom, which are unimaginable ideas. However, nonsense is also a good part of communication.

Many plans made me and other PMs feel helpless, but I knew: if we don’t change, we will be dead.

After a three-hour confrontation, the product finally compromised and completely revamped the homepage, reducing the size of the entrance to the "subscription function" which was not used frequently; the number of category labels was reduced by one row, allowing users to experience the product more intuitively and reduce choices.

The most important step is to seize the platform advantages, take "high-quality part-time job" as the entry point for products and brands, magnify the advantages, and put it on the homepage in a "carousel-like" display method. The packaged high-quality part-time job inner page uses a UI framework independent of ordinary part-time jobs and embeds H5 links to package text.

Just like that, with a brand new brand image, APP 3.0 was officially launched.

At the end of the period, as expected, the data did reach a peak, but it successfully prevented the data from falling further. The operations department is still constantly fine-tuning the product and focusing more on brand public relations. This was the first time that operations changed the product in such a direct way, but the data had a hidden meaning in it.

In January 2016, I rotated to operations with many goals, the most important of which was to change the team's current tricky communication problems, make operations more dynamic, and look at the product and myself from a new perspective.

Once there is a first time, there will be a second time.

In February 2016, we were already proficient in operating the current product. After the last product change, operations had more say and were more willing to express their ideas. Soon, a new function naturally entered technical development:

Operation: Why can’t you sign up for part-time jobs that are already fully registered?

Product: The number of applicants is limited, and the number of places is determined by the merchant. The logic is correct.

Operation: What merchants want is the number of admissions, but the number of admissions and the number of recruitments are not equal.

Product: This issue has been discussed before, and it is impossible to distinguish between the two now

Operation: Since there is no distinction, why can't other users choose to wait for part-time jobs that are full?

Product: How to define the waiting user

Operation: The merchant chooses not to admit a student, and the waiting student automatically signs up for a part-time job

Product: What if the merchant doesn’t choose not to accept the admission?

Operations: I didn’t expect this, but my description is not only what I want.

Product: Wait, I know what to say. We will meet in the meeting room on the third floor tomorrow.

This was the second victory of the operation war, and the origin of the "queue function", which solved:

• Companies are troubled by the mismatch between the number of recruits and the number of applicants;
• Eliminates the feeling of "loss" caused by users' rejection of part-time jobs they are interested in but fail to register;
• Operators do not need to worry about the excessive timeliness of not having enough registrations for the packaged high-quality part-time jobs (being taken off the shelves as soon as they are put on the shelves because the quota is full).

The new version is waiting to be launched, school has not yet started, but the brand new operations and team are already ready to go.

In March 2016, what we waited for was not disappointment. The average data increased by 4 times compared with December 2015. The part-time transaction orders refreshed the historical peak 8 times that month. The important thing is: we did not spend a penny extra.

Don't be afraid of war, operations need to speak out

It is found that many companies have too much say in products, and product managers are at the forefront of operations instead of operations managers taking the lead. This situation mainly occurs in start-ups or early stages of products. Although product managers can make judgments based on their own experience and insight, they are prone to misunderstandings.

There are many reasons for this kind of situation, but the core key lies in: operational weakness!

Weakness means that you have no say, you are not doing your current job well, you have not made the team see the vision, you have not made programmers understand their value, and so on.

Internal wars are not accidental, and all operations need to speak up. In my opinion, the biggest difference between weak operations and strong products is the sense of "ownership". The product manager will create a website, APP or even a function to help his or her BABY, knowing the day she is born and the day she gets sick. We need to speak up and start from our daily lives.

The excellent operators I have come into contact with also have this trait. A sense of ownership can give you a sense of mission and responsibility.

First of all, you have to learn to be self-driven, which can help you understand your own value, or at least know why you leave your bed every day! What is my daily routine? Why were yesterday's data so bad?

Start slowly and develop a habit of thinking. Many times you need to put aside your main perspective and look at a problem from the perspective of the department, company, industry, etc. Don't let your thinking be imprisoned by yourself.

Everyone is their own product manager, pushing themselves all the time, grasping every important node to control it, and having different solutions and optimal options when encountering problems. Even small words in a product description need to be thought about.

Don't disbelieve it, the only difference between you and a product manager is experience and a business card.

Let me talk about some more specifics:

First of all, you have to know the value of your existence and have a sense of "ownership". In the morning meeting, you should speak up about the problems you encounter and initiate reasonable discussions. You should report to your superiors and provide solutions. You should ask others for advice in informal settings (without negative energy) and speak with data analysis .

Then comes the activity. As the initiator, in addition to internal discussions, you must also extend them to external discussions.

Actively invite colleagues from other departments to participate in the discussion meeting. An open and relaxed environment will allow everyone to speak freely. Carefully record every valuable "key point" and don't forget to say thank you after the meeting.

When your activities involve technical development, please call on all relevant technologies, products and designs. Before that, you still need to communicate with the persons in charge first, explain the content roughly, and then send an email to explain and invite partners to attend the meeting.

Such an activity discussion meeting is equivalent to the product's "requirements review meeting". War requires confrontation and we must get used to questioning. , please believe that everyone is standing on the company's unified value perspective (if not, please point it out solemnly). Don't worry about the meeting being long; you need to make the purpose of the event clear, then make it clear what development needs to be involved and ask the product manager to check it for you (sometimes out of courtesy).

Sometimes you even need to spend half of the meeting time to explain the significance of the event. This is to hope that everyone will form a united front and know that they are part of the event team. The most important thing is to let everyone know their value, what they are doing, what they can bring to the company after completing their work, possible dangers, and possible achievements. . . . . .

A small case: In December 2015, an accidental outburst caused by a simple operation activity caused the number of orders to hit a new high that day. What surprised me the most was that the programmers who were scolded for server failures caused by traffic pressure were happier than the operations team who designed and tracked planned activities!

Everyone was also freed from the backlog of confusion, the merchant operation team had a more reasonable plan, and the product operation continued to heat up and control the traffic brought by the activities.

Therefore, operation is a voice that can directly give the team confidence and pressure. It is a positive energy rather than a one-sided self-satisfaction. Do you still think this kind of operation is simple?

Looking back at the event itself, it didn’t take too much experience, but there were two points that were close to the extreme:

(1) We held an event meeting for discussion, with participants including operations, products, design, and technology.

The meeting lasted more than an hour, and everyone knew the purpose and reason of the event, although the technology was ultimately not implemented as designed.

(2) The activity itself established channels and negotiations based on the users’ current interests as obtained through user research.

I always believe that operations are the excitement point and metronome of an enterprise. Please remember: the company problems solved by a surge in traffic far outweigh the direct value and data value brought by the traffic.

Everyone is their own product manager

Internal wars are not accidental. Who has the final say in operations and products?

In fact, products and operations are not separate, but most people think that products and operations are completely different. The first is the difference in thinking logic, the second is the difference in purpose, and the most important thing is "sense of ownership." In the early stages of a company, a product manager is often the initiator and person in charge of a company's products. He treats the product like his own baby, knowing when it was born, when it got sick, when it died suddenly...

The excellent operators I have come into contact with also have this trait. Rather than calling it a "owner trait", it is better to say that they are also PMs (product managers). Why do I say that?

Product Manager: I am often the one who initiates meeting discussions

Operations expert: I not only initiate meetings, I also have alternative plans and KPIs

Product Manager: I need to write and organize various documents

Operations experts: I not only need documents, I also need sandbox meetings (operation activity review meetings to understand deficiencies and improvements in practice) to take responsibility for the KPIs I carry

Product Manager: I also need to coordinate between various departments and even business units of the company every day.

Operations expert: Not only do I have to coordinate, I also have to ask for more help through planning and even the cash flow of the business.

…

The theory is always so simple. What’s important is that you have to be willing to take on such responsibilities, responsibilities to yourself, responsibilities to your work, and responsibilities to the company.

As an operator, what do you need to do to become a "PM"?

The first thing is to learn to be self-driven, which can help you understand your own value. At least you should know why you leave your bed every day! What is my daily routine? Why were yesterday's data so bad?

Start slowly and develop a habit of thinking. Many times you need to put aside your main perspective and look at a problem from the perspective of the department, company, industry, etc. Don't let your thinking be imprisoned by yourself.

Everyone is their own product manager, pushing themselves all the time, grasping every important node to control it, and having different solutions and optimal options when encountering problems. Even small words in a product description need to be thought about.

At this point, aren’t you also a product manager?

Don’t disbelieve it, the only difference between you and a product manager is experience and a business card.

Summarize

Who has the final say on operating products?

I’m afraid I don’t have the correct answer either. There are people who continue to remain silent, and there are people who speak out. If you choose to jump into the Internet today, it may change rapidly tomorrow, one iteration or one campaign at a time. Looking back, taking three months as a reference, we have faced so many challenges together and so many upside-down days and nights. If you are willing to believe, all of this will be worth it.

The internal war between operations and products is being rehearsed every day. Don't let your voice spread outside. Speaking out is always your best side. Close the door, speak and curse slowly, think with your brain, and let time pass quickly. Don't be afraid of ruining the atmosphere. We are all a community with common interests under one company. Let's look into the distance from today.

Please believe that internal war is a bitter medicine for your company and you to keep moving forward.