Product planning is one of the many responsibilities of product managers, and it is also the most important routine work content. The workflow of product planning is also a process of product demand analysis, which is mainly divided into obtaining demand, analyzing demand and making decision.
Whether it is a new product or an iterative product, it starts with an idea and then makes a plan. Therefore, product planning is to get the idea or demand first, then analyze and judge the demand, determine the feasibility of the demand, and then evaluate the priority of the feasible demand and arrange the implementation plan. This process is product planning and product demand analysis.
Product demand comes from all aspects, and different people generate ideas and express them to the product manager, mainly from inside the company (boss or leader, other departments or colleagues), outside (users, customers, partners) and the product manager himself (research planning or inspiration).
In the work of product planning, demand decision-making is a process with subjective factors, sometimes subjective consciousness comes from leaders and sometimes from product managers themselves. These subjective factors will directly affect product planning, sometimes bringing good results, sometimes bringing bad results, and even counterproductive results. But in addition to subjective factors, there are reference standards for the analysis, decision-making, feasibility and priority evaluation of product requirements, which can be summarized into three considerations and four design concepts respectively.
2. 1, strategic direction
The strategic direction is a very macro direction. There is no clear boundary standard in this direction, but it can give us a reference range and goal. In the process of implementation, it is subdivided into various stages, and the goals to be achieved in each stage are different. Therefore, when analyzing and judging requirements, we must learn to make decisions and give up or postpone unimportant requirements.
Common strategic stages include initial stage, development stage and iterative stage. At the initial stage of product planning, we pay attention to the realization of core functions, with the aim of putting the product on the market quickly and verifying the feasibility of the product. In the development stage, we will pay attention to the expansion and perfection of product functions, and at this stage, we will also carry out small-scale trial and error experiments to explore the new value of products. In the iterative stage, products are basically mature and stable, demand decisions will focus on improving user experience, and commercial products will also try to be commercialized.
In addition to the market level, there are internal strategies. The significance of products in the company's overall strategy determines the input of resources, funds and manpower for product implementation, and directly affects the implementation plan of product decision. For example, in a large company, many products only need this product in the strategic layout, but this product is not the core product of the company, so it will not invest a lot of support in the company-level strategy. Therefore, the product manager in charge of this product should take this factor into account when planning the product, so as to avoid the planned demand being realized without support.
The strategy is divided into stages, and the stages are divided into versions. By refining the requirements standards in this way, it is determined what the core of each version needs to achieve, in which product positioning, user needs and current environment need to be considered, so as to determine the standards for requirements analysis and judgment. Because no matter how great the products are, they are all developed and upgraded in stages, so we need to find the demand focus of each stage.
Through strategic factors, it can be understood that demand decision-making should refer to stage planning, and not all "useful requirements" should be realized at one time. This requires us to have some common sense of project management and more experience accumulation.
2.2, product positioning
There are some overlapping factors between product positioning and strategic direction, but the strategic direction is more biased towards market and company, while product positioning pays more attention to functional definition, so the consideration of product positioning is to measure the relevance of functional requirements and judge whether functional requirements meet product positioning.
Through product positioning, we can define the boundaries of functional requirements. Not all "related requirements" should be realized in product planning, and whether the requirements meet the product positioning should be fully considered.
2.3, user demand
The products we make are for users, and the value of the products is to meet the needs of users, so the needs of users are also a very important consideration for us. In product planning, we need to pay attention to two aspects as reference factors of user demand, that is, "not taking demand as demand, not taking product form as essence".
(1) Don't treat needs as demands.
I once published a product knowledge structure diagram, and expressed my intention to organize product knowledge systematically, and maybe write a book. However, because of busy work, it has not been put on the agenda, so many friends will ask me privately about my progress and express their interest.
The needs of these groups seem to be product manager books, but in fact this is not the real demand. What they want is a set of systematic product manager knowledge, and books are just the carrier of this knowledge, so if I meet their needs, it doesn't matter to them whether the carrier is a physical book or a video tutorial.
Therefore, we need to recognize what the real needs of users are, and don't take the users' demand for books as demand. Finally, combined with my own strategy and positioning, I decided to use video to meet the needs of users, because video is more vivid, has more advantages than books in market and business value, and is more suitable for me to realize it immediately at this stage. Based on the consideration of market, users, environment and value, I finally released the video tutorial "Excellent Product Manager Course".
② Don't take the product form as the essence.
In the next chapter, I will explain a case of product planning. In this case, the "suitcase" is the form of the user, but it is not the essence of the product in the true sense. If the form is regarded as the essence, and the "suitcase" is the main product planning and design, then it is difficult for the planned scheme to break through the inherent form.
The essence of luggage is what people carry when they travel. If you give this concept to users, they need to carry an object when they travel, then the experience at this time is completely different from that of luggage. Through the investigation of this concept, we can see the essence clearly and get real essential feedback.
Through user demand, we can help us grasp product planning more accurately, increase the value of products in the market, and improve user experience and utilization.
2.4, example discussion
Based on the above three considerations, it helps us to define a scope of consideration in product planning. Here is an example for your reference. For example, the company's strategic direction is to be a mother-infant community, product positioning is a platform for mother-infant mutual assistance and communication, and the strategic development stage is the initial stage. If there are two requirements, the first is to support members to love other members in communication, and the second is to support the function of matching advertisements according to users' preferences.
In view of this situation, how do we make our own decisions about the two needs?
The first requirement is that members can love other members in communication, which fully embodies the characteristics of product positioning, effectively enhances the value of mutual assistance and communication platform, and promotes mutual assistance and communication among members through love. Secondly, matching advertising functions according to users' preferences can help products try to commercialize and realize the possibility of realizing product realization.
Every company or product manager has its own environment and decision-making criteria, but if it were me, I would choose to give priority to the realization of the member's Aite function. Considering that the strategic stage is the initial stage, at this stage, the products usually have not occupied absolute market share. At this time, the research and development of business functions will easily lead to the "need to improve user experience" that cannot be realized quickly. If user requirements and business requirements are carried out at the same time, the team is more likely to lose focus. Once the energy is dispersed, thoughtless requirements can easily enter the realization level. These factors can easily lead to the product without a clear direction, and the team members are exhausted but have no actual results.
If the team has a very organized strategy and strong execution, then the realization of parallel requirements is naturally no problem. Usually this happens in a stable team, and few teams in the initial stage can cooperate skillfully. Out of my product thinking, in the initial stage, I will give priority to the needs of users of products. Of course, my decision is not necessarily perfect. This example just provides you with a topic to think about.
The consideration of strategy in product planning helps us to define the scope of decision-making, but it is not enough. Once the strategy is formulated, it needs to be refined to the design level. When designing products, the details of function definition will be mentioned in the discussion.
The design of product planning is adhering to the user-centered design concept and taking user experience as the principle, researching and designing product functions and experiences. Usually it can be divided into four priority levels, forming a pyramid design concept.
3. 1, useful: identify the effectiveness of requirements and grasp the core requirements.
For new products, the priority and important task is to define the product as "useful" to users. "Useful" is a product direction that we need to make clear before defining and developing, so as to ensure that the product has a clear functional definition and user definition.
For example, the core functions of the refrigerator are preservation and freezing, and the user-defined group naturally uses these two functions. If a refrigerator has a fashionable appearance and practical expansion function, but the preservation or freezing function is not perfect, it is also a failed product for users, because the core value of the product is useless to the user group.
3.2 Usability: Remodeling and ensuring requirements to meet different usage scenarios.
When we know the direction of the product, we must ensure that the product is "usable" when developing. "Usability" is an audit standard to ensure that the product will not have functional bugs and ensure the safety, speed, compatibility and fluency of the product.
For example, the core function definition of a bank website is online banking. Although online banking meets the requirements of "usefulness", it is poor in "usability", for example, it does not support non-IE browsers, which makes it impossible for users in non-IE environments to use online banking functions.
3.3. Ease of use: comb the structure and process to make it easy for users to use.
On the premise of "usefulness" and "usability", we will pay attention to the "usability" and "usability" of products, which contain many details and need us to dig deeper and study.
The design concept of "easy to use" is user experience, which requires us to fully consider the user's behavior habits and usage scenarios when designing products, thus reducing the learning cost and usage cost of users.
For example, deleting emails in batches by day or week takes only two steps for QQ mailbox, but many steps for Netease mailbox. From this detail, we can see the user experience, and Netease invisibly increases the user's use cost.
Nowadays, there are more and more spam and meaningless subscription emails. A mailbox has been used for a long time, and some emails need to be deleted every day, so the deletion function is also an important function of mailbox users, so QQ mailbox surpasses Netease mailbox in ease of use.
3.4, easy to use: optimize the design interface, in line with user preferences.
After meeting the above three conditions, the product will pay attention to visual performance in the pursuit of user experience, stimulate and enhance the user's subconscious operation behavior from visual images, and reduce the user's thinking time.
The highest level of UI design is to improve the user's operating efficiency, influence the user's operating habits through color tones, and clarify the primary and secondary functions/contents of products with colors or graphics, so that users can know how to operate without thinking. This is also an interface language.
The four concepts of product design can help us effectively identify functional definitions and user definitions, and determine the priority level of requirements according to design concepts. In the process of product development, the first problem is to ensure the completion of the core functions of the product, to ensure that the product is "useful" and "usable" for users, and then to improve and optimize the "usability" and "usability" of the product quickly and iteratively.
Understanding and mastering the three considerations and four design concepts of product planning aims to help us make more accurate decisions and avoid the temptation of divergent thinking to deviate from the original strategic direction and product positioning, which is also a very important working step in product planning. Whether the company has a special demand decision-making process or not, this basic knowledge and steps must be in the mind of the product manager.
Demand analysis and decision-making is a very fast process, especially for companies with waterfall development mode, they will not put too much energy into demand analysis and decision-making, but directly analyze demand and make decisions in the process of product planning, which can greatly reduce the idleness of other staff and ensure the synchronization of work. Only when a large company or product has a large number of decision-making objects will it be refined, and demand analysis and decision-making will be done separately. The rest is often done directly by the product manager.
After collecting the requirements from internal, external and self-conceived, the product manager should make a decision on the requirements, plan the requirements in various stages and versions in detail, and complete the requirements document of the version to be realized at present. In addition to the three considerations and four design concepts mentioned above, we also need a systematic idea to classify, classify and grade requirements to help us better understand requirements and make decisions.
① classification
At work, we will certainly receive many requests. In order to manage requirements better, it is undoubtedly the best way to classify and store requirements. For example, the goods in the supermarket are divided into areas according to categories and shelves according to types, which can greatly facilitate managers and consumers to find goods more conveniently, and so is our demand classification, which is convenient for us to better manage, analyze and make decisions on demand.
Because the classification of requirements is convenient for product managers to manage requirements, there is no classification standard, and it depends entirely on the personal preferences of product managers. Classification methods can be classified according to functional attributes, such as function class, data class, operation class, experience class and design class. It can also be classified according to responsibility attributes, such as technology, design, operation, editing, customer service and so on. It can also be classified according to channel attributes, such as home page category, column category, shopping cart category and personal center category.
② Fractionation
In order to make further decisions on the requirements, we need to divide the requirements into four categories according to the consideration factors and design theory, and according to the importance and urgency of these requirements. Taking the urgency of demand as the horizontal axis and the importance of demand as the vertical axis, the following four-quadrant diagram of product demand can be established.
After dividing the requirements, it is convenient for us to know the priority of the requirements, and it is also convenient for us to further evaluate the priority.
③ Grading
After classification and positioning, consider grading, evaluate the priority level of requirements, and decide the implementation plan of requirements.
There are usually three elements to consider in terms of priority. The first element is the opinion of the leader, the second element is the product manager himself, and the third element is the team's willingness to agree (the team's willingness to agree is mainly to achieve costs and stage goals, etc.). ).
After three analysis and decision-making processes of classification, classification and grading, product managers can easily divide requirements into plans and realize multiple versions of requirements according to different planning stages. If there is less demand, it will be implemented iteratively.
Competitive products are competitive products, that is, competitors' products. Competitive product analysis, as its name implies, is to compare and analyze competitors' products, discover and study their advantages, so that product managers can plan and design their own products and make clear their functions and values.
The content of competing products analysis is to analyze and summarize competing products from competitors or market-related products according to specific needs in a way close to user process simulation. There is no specific format specification for the analysis and summary documents of competing products, so there is usually no need to pursue the form too deliberately, because such things can achieve the effect. If the effect is not enough, it can be supplemented temporarily. Here are two examples, one is the demand table of competing products analysis, and the other is the analysis summary table of an overseas real estate website I compiled.
Competitive product analysis report (Excel format)
Please click on the picture to see a bigger picture.
I have also compiled the analysis report of competing products into an article and published it. Click here to read.
In the second chapter, "The Logic of Product Planning and Design", I briefly introduced the viewpoint that everything has logic. I think the development of science and technology, in practical sense, is that human beings constantly define logical formulas to calculate results. Both science and technology are discoveries or innovations that do not appear completely out of thin air. It calculates new results/conclusions through gradual formula evolution on the basis of existing things. Since everything has logic, product planning naturally has logic and formulas. For newcomers, due to lack of knowledge and experience, they may not be able to establish logical formulas, so they will have a headache in product planning and don't know how to start. This chapter shares a skill of product planning, explains how to deduce product planning through definition, and sets up a logical formula. When we think of product planning, we often jump into the overall thinking in our minds, which will make our thinking confused, which is very unfavorable to the thinking of product planning. The skill of sharing this chapter is to turn the proposition composition into multiple-choice questions, so that product planning can naturally set up a framework, and we only need to find inspiration in the framework like building blocks. We take luggage as the theme. Although this is not an Internet product, the idea of product planning is the same, so I take the development history of luggage as an example of product planning. If you have watched the TV series of Modern Times, you must know that the suitcase at that time was just a suitcase that could be lifted by hand, unlike the suitcase with wheels that we often see now. So how does the suitcase product manager tap the demand and reform the product when the suitcase product is innovative? For such a product, when Boss initiated this project, many people often improved the luggage from a fashion perspective, such as replacing wood with leather, such as more diversified colors. In such a field, even if users are surveyed, innovative information may not be obtained, because users have subconsciously thought that suitcases should be like this. When you investigate, their feedback tends to be fashionable and light weight. This is just like WhatsApp's products. Before it was invented, people thought that texting should be done through operators. Even if they are not satisfied with the service, the feedback they provide only hopes that other operators' SMS charges or packages are cheaper than another, and they will not put forward the idea of new channels at all. So under such circumstances, how to tap the demand and plan new products? Please take a look at the planning flow chart of the suitcase below, and show you a planning flow.
First of all, I tell you that the product positioning in one sentence or one sentence is only the slogan of marketing propaganda, not the inherent form of the product. We need to define the product attributes, user groups and usage scenarios in detail to restore the essence of the product. Through the definition from the first floor to the second floor, we know that suitcases are things that people carry when they travel. If the concept is given to the user and he needs to carry an object when traveling, then the experience at this time is completely different from that of a suitcase. Through the investigation of this concept, we have got two common user puzzles from many feedbacks, that is, it is too tiring (physical consumption) and too troublesome (it is necessary to ensure that it is not lost at all times and cannot be stored at will). At this time, our logical formula is established. In this framework, we only need to look for two points, that is, to look for products that can move objects but have light physical strength, and to look for specifications and size data that are easy to store. When we found and studied these things, we began to design the prototype of the product, combined with the knowledge of UE and UI, and integrated the elements of the solution into the product to form a new product. After the new product is put on the market, it is constantly improved through its own use, data tracking, user analysis and other factors, so there is product evolution. With such frame building blocks, is it much easier to plan products? The principle of logical formula is to make your thinking process structured and regular, and avoid divergent thinking that makes you feel overwhelmed. The simple product formula is addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. When we accumulate to a certain stage, we can think more, such as more complicated function formulas.
People's thinking is divergent, so it is easy to make some mistakes in product planning, for example, there is no clear direction in planning, and the necessity, importance and realization cost of each demand are not clear.
7. 1, closed meeting
A complete product involves many fields of knowledge, and the support of subsequent operations should also be taken into account in product planning, so even if the product manager is rich in knowledge, there are no professionals engaged in this field in some professional fields to clarify. Where the product manager needs team assistance or communication in product planning, don't work behind closed doors, which will easily lead to unrealistic demands written hard.
7.2, the logic is unclear
Because the product manager's job is at the implementation level, if the logic is unclear, it will be terrible, which will lead to executives not knowing how to implement product requirements. The most common logical ambiguity is that the process of functional requirements is not good, there are not too many conditions for process deduction, and the process conditions are not perfect. Disputes with technicians at work are often the same, and illogical behavior is very offensive to technicians.
7.3, striding forward
Internet products are different from the traditional software industry. Internet products pay attention to rapid iteration and run in small steps. Therefore, when product managers plan product iterative requirements, it is easy to forget stage goals and time plans, which will lead to demand load and big step iteration. Of course, there are also some company teams whose iterative requirements are long-term and long-term iterations, so different company requirements will lead to different iterative schemes. However, in the leap-forward iterative planning, small stages and milestones will also be subdivided to avoid the iterative confusion caused by the loss of goals and the implantation of new requirements in the leap-forward process.
7.4, fast iteration
Some PM or bosses will listen to what is called "fast without breaking" and deliberately pursue iterative speed. This kind of quick success and instant benefit iteration can easily put the product into crisis. For example, one iteration a week, five working days a week, in this short period of five days, you need to go through planning, design, development, testing and online. It is difficult to ensure that every request is well thought out. If the team does not cooperate tacitly, it will cause fatal injuries. Therefore, product managers need to know some knowledge about project management, do not deliberately pursue rapid iteration, and find a time rhythm suitable for the team.
7.5, can't tell priorities
If the product manager can't tell the priorities of the work, it will easily lead to the product without a clear direction, and the team members are exhausted but have no actual results. In addition to the tasks at the company level, determining the priority of work content also includes combining the knowledge of demand decision-making in product planning and arranging the work plan according to the optimization degree of demand.