what exactly does planning do? Some people say that he is the soul of a product; Some people say that he should figure out how to operate; Some people say that he is nothing, as long as he has innovative ideas; Wait, wait, wait, wait. There's too much talk. Through my own work experience, I divide planning into two types: product planning and operation planning. Maybe some people will question how to divide it, or what should be included. I won't defend anything here, just express my own views. There is nothing to argue about, because there is no unified conclusion. Why is it so divided? The main reason is that these two types of planning work are quite different, and they require many different skills and qualities, and they also have different requirements and influences on personnel's personality.
product planning:
what is product planning? According to the literal meaning, it can be easily understood that product planning is the chief designer of a product. For different industries and different enterprises, their products are different, but the concept is the same. I like to use analogy to make readers understand what I mean more easily. Take the film industry as an analogy to the Internet industry, and the following positions will also be compared with the corresponding positions in the film industry.
product planning, like a director in the film industry, usually plays the role of a screenwriter. He needs to guide the business logic of the whole product (clearly guide every shot of the film): remember that it is business logic, not system or product structure logic, which will be completed by system architects.
obtaining business requirements and writing product execution planning documents (writing scripts): the most important part of my work, which will be described in detail later.
Select qualified project team members (looking for actors, photographers, film and television post-editors, sound engineers, props, etc.): At present, most of these tasks are completed by the project manager, but I think a qualified product manager should be most responsible for his own products, which requires the ability to correctly select working partners and identify the working skills of people in other work links, especially the core personnel in the technical department, because once the core technical backbone is selected, Experienced and excellent technicians will get twice the result with half the effort, and the technical backbone will also play a vital role in the selection of personnel in other technical work links.
coordinate all links in the development process, and make timely feedback when the logic is unclear or needs change (explaining the purpose of the film, adjusting the mood of the actors, and putting forward the visual needs of post-production to non-linear editors, etc.).
Do some user testing during product development (watch movie clips): Of course, I am not talking about unit testing or integration testing, which will be done in the daily work of technicians in a black box. Product planning only needs user testing.
In a word, product planning is a series of related work by obtaining business requirements (usually from the operation department, Boss, or self-innovation), using your own professional knowledge to turn this demand into a guidance document that the technical department can do practical work (that is, the content of the planning guide section in foolsidea.org for fools), and at the same time cooperating with other work links. According to the enterprise project, you can call yourself a RequirementAnalyst. I prefer to call myself a requirement analyst or an InteractionDesigner to distinguish myself from the confusing concept of "planning".
product planning is the connection point between business and technology, which can also be said to be the central conduction system. Some large companies have a large number of employees and several projects are held at the same time. At this time, product planning will be more detailed and work functions will be more professional. From chief planning to internship planning, there are different names, but the work involved is still the same.
operation planning:
what is an operation planning? Similarly, taking the film industry as an analogy, operation planning is like a warmup worker before the release of a film, a speculator after the release, and an overall planning operator. Of course, it is not limited to this, but also includes many other jobs.
the so-called operation is to effectively package and publicize the existing products (movie advertising).
integrate related resources around yourself (making peripheral products, looking for partners and increasing influence).
organize corresponding activities to promote (various activities support incentives).
Criticize your achievements and hype your own value (film reviews are getting higher and higher).
and so on, in fact, there is no essential difference between Internet operation and other industries' operation, just because the resources and industry users are different and the means of implementation are different. In a word, the main work of operation planning is to grasp the market situation in time, integrate the surrounding resources, and promote the own products and realize profit through a series of operation means.
Simply speaking, it can be understood as a marketing worker, but unlike the traditional marketing department, most of the so-called operation planning in reality has assumed many performance pillar roles (a bit like publishers in the film industry), which is the traditional sales department. The main reason is that the profit model of most companies in the Internet industry is unclear. The company not only needs a promotional superman who will spend money, but also needs him to ensure that it can bring actual profits to the company. Because the profit model is not clear, decision makers are not sure whether a certain scheme can work after its beautiful promotion (of course, if it is like the trading relationship in traditional industries, it is another matter). This greatly raises the requirements for operation planning to a higher level, that is to say, a good operation planning should not only have a wide range of channels and many friends, but also have a unique vision and market sense, which can accurately predict the actual effect after promotion. The latter is the essential criterion for evaluating whether this person is an excellent operation planning or an ordinary operation planning.
It is suggested that readers read an authoritative book on integrated marketing, which will be of great benefit to their work.
product planning:
back to product planning, what kind of person can be called a qualified product planning? What qualities should he have? I simply talk about my own views here, which will not be very comprehensive. Of course, I can't say that what I said is the requirement of authority, but from the perspective of a professional, I think it is still worth your reference.
first of all, a qualified product planning should have the ability to describe a thing. What do you mean? As I said before, product planning is actually a bridge between business requirements and technology development. If operation planning represents requirements and technical director represents development units, then product planning is a lubricant and catalyst for effective communication and convergence between them. An excellent product planning can completely transform the operational requirements into a development guidance document or other forms of information, express it and transmit it to technicians, and use the communication language between technicians to express the logic and requirements of business requirements (how to express it specifically is beyond the scope of this article, I will elaborate it in another article). Some people may say that these things you just said are too simple, just write them casually by anyone, and what is shown to the technicians is not so complicated, so just say them with your mouth. Ha ha, if you say so, I think this can only mean that you have never been engaged in the actual product development process. Like other industries, what product planning needs to do is to describe the product features in detail as much as possible before the actual development work begins, so that the actual developers can understand the actual needs exactly, just like you need to draw the manuscript before making a movie, and you will not think about it now when you actually shoot it, otherwise the development cost will be unpredictable and the possibility of product failure will be extremely enlarged (after all, In addition, I have seen many cases in which the operators wrote their own requirements to the technicians, saying that this is the development document, and the technicians read it and said it was nothing. Why? What AlanCooper said, in the eyes of technicians, the development document mentioned by operators is only a concept of one thing, and it can't actually guide the work; In the eyes of operators, the development document required by technicians is simply a product instruction manual, and I don't know how to write it. Product planning is just like their translation, which translates requirements into work instruction documents. This requires that product planning needs to master two "languages" and be able to communicate smoothly with market operators and technicians, so as to avoid different understandings and judgments on one thing due to different knowledge fields. Simply put, product planning plays a role in coordinating the balance between the needs of all parties and the actual work ability.
furthermore, product planning needs the ability to accept new things quickly. Why do you say that? The reason is very simple. Can a product planner design a good product if he doesn't know or master the industry in which the product is designed? Even if some operators put forward their needs, what if the product planning itself doesn't know what they are talking about? Joke! MissionImpossible！ An impossible task! Therefore, a good product planning may not be familiar with the field of your products at first, but you must get involved in it in a very, very short time. Through communication with relevant personnel in the industry, mainly operators, you can understand business needs, business logic and processes, and one of the key assessment points for evaluating the Excellence of product planning is also here: the ability to quickly recognize products in unfamiliar fields.
in addition to the two basic skills just mentioned, the third is the watershed between advanced product planning and ordinary product planning. what is that? Is the ability to innovate. This ability is rare for demand analysts in some enterprise projects, because they mainly do business processes and logic, and only when an enterprise's operating model is mature will they do information work, so they don't need too much innovation. However, the Internet industry is not like this, and innovation is everywhere, especially in the operation mode and the integration with related technologies, which is very prominent. I remember a friend once said that there are two kinds of people who have the most innovative potential in the Internet industry. One is people who eat related technologies thoroughly, and they can make fundamental innovations from the technology itself. There are also operators closest to customers, who can find innovative services from the most basic needs of customers; However, both of these potentials have fatal shortcomings that are not easy to be discovered. Technicians are too focused on technology and don't know what fields or application points this technology can be applied to. Marketers are too focused on demand and don't know how this demand can be realized, which often falls into an endless fantasy situation. At this time, the people who are most likely to succeed in innovation are limited to the intersection between them, that is, it is often said that there are only two kinds of people who will succeed in the Internet industry, businessmen who know technology and technicians who know the market. A simple sentence summarizes the ultimate goal of an excellent product planning.
I don't want to say anything else. Of course, there are many more, but if you can do the above three points, no matter which company you are in, any boss will reuse them because you are comprehensive. Of course, if you are your own boss, at least in the core scope of work, you can grasp the overall situation, not blind people. (Except finance, hehe. )