I have been doing traditional project management for more than 10 years, and in the context of the digital era, I have a deep experience:
From the perspective of personal ability and long-term development, the project manager needs to have product capabilities.
Even in the future, there will no longer be independent projects and products, and it is an inevitable trend for project managers to have product capabilities.
Therefore, while carrying out special project management, I am also thinking and exploring, integrating product thinking into project management.
I have summarized the following aspects from the experience and shortcomings of the special project for everyone to think about:
Be the responsibility of the master and actively promote it
Under traditional project management, the time of the project is constrained, the goal of the project is set, and many times it is passively accepted by the needs of users.
The needs of users in each department out of their own departments and ideas cannot be planned from the height of the company's product management, and the urgency and importance of the needs are often evaluated by each department from its own interests.
What's more, the needs of users are not very clear, and some say, "You help me think about it." Some said, "Let's try it for a month and see how it goes." ”
At first, I was also speechless: the business department didn't think clearly about what the purpose and value were trying to achieve, what requirements to propose, and what projects to do.
More and more of this is happening laterI re-examined my way of thinking and found that my thinking was confined to the framework of project management, so I always think:
1) First of all, it is necessary to clarify the requirements of the user, and the requirements are decided by the user, the clearer the better.
2) After figuring out the requirements, think about how to implement them.
3) Prioritize the need according to our existing work plan.
4) This matter still needs the cooperation of other groups and departments, and I will start after the other groups and departments are completed.
After thinking about using product thinking, I realized that I need to be the "master" of the product and the project, and I have the responsibility and obligation to actively promote and solve the problem when I encounter a problem in any link, and this enthusiasm comes from the sense of ownership of the needs and the project
1) Take the initiative to think and tap needs
Ask the user what the real pain point is and what the goal is.
The gap between the current status quo and the purpose is **. At the same time, it is also necessary to think about the user's cool points, and what aspects and functions have been improved, which can make users feel particularly "cool".
2) Think deeply about the goal rather than simply the execution:
Prioritize why you're doing it, which is exactly what the user wants to achieve.
In the special project of organizational structure adjustment, we conduct a detailed analysis of the organizational strategy, and predict the configuration adjustment involved in the content of the "mesh organizational structure" in advance in the front-end system to undertake the construction party's business, and complete the relevant configuration in advance; Identify the gap between the business needs of the construction business for personnel handover and the existing functions, and propose a docking and transformation plan.
3) Define reasonable priorities based on goals
In previous projects, the first thing to do when taking over the project was to split the tasks related to yourself, determine the corresponding person in charge, and the development was scheduled according to the work at hand.
In the post-level product integration needs, combined with the actual business, we believe that the urgent needs of users are the support for the design of products to be sold in cost channels, revenue recognition and inter-company settlement, so we cooperate with the marketing service digital department to identify the fast and optimal solution, and give priority to transforming the order, invoicing, and inter-company settlement processes that are urgently needed by the business;
Predict the equivalent level of data maintenance and complete all data maintenance in advance.
4) Take the initiative to promote and be actively responsible for the progress of the project
For unclear work, take the initiative to find other groups of departments ** to discuss clarity and clarity, rather than passively waiting for instructions.
In the special all-electric ticket of the ticketing system, although the source of demand is the all-electronic invoice docked by the ticketing system.
However, from the beginning of the project, we jumped out of passive waiting, actively interpreted the requirements for the docking system from the upgrade point of the system, as a bridge between the ticketing system and the front-end system, listed various scenarios that may occur in the business in advance, and deduced the steps and data requirements of the business process in each system, so as to actively deduce the content that each front-end system needs to cooperate with the transformation, and make a disclosure and rapid iterative transformation of the transformation of each front-end system.
In particular, due to the lack of mature experience, we take the initiative to ask the ticketing system to try the reverse scenario and share and deduce it among the customers who have been on the all-electric invoice, so as to prepare our reverse scenario process in advance.
At the same time, during the implementation of the project, actively monitor and promote the progress of the ticketing system and various front-end systems to ensure the progress and quality of the project. In a short period of time, we coordinated the joint testing of all parties, quickly found problems, solved problems efficiently, monitored the progress of transformation and regression testing, and achieved efficient and high-quality completion of joint debugging tests, and estimated, excavated and solved problems.
Attached: User testing issue tracking.
Summary:Jump out of the limitations of your preset roles, change the traditional project role of executor, collaborator, and responder to the creator, leader, and promoter, consider from all aspects, and strive to promote the completion of the project, so as to be the owner of the product and the project.
Embrace change and focus on data analytics
Keep thinking about optimization
Traditional project management is phased and time-sensitive, but with the passage of time, the needs of users are constantly changing, so we also need to be a continuous process in "meeting user needs". Even when customers do not put forward requirements, we are constantly thinking about optimization and iteration to improve the quality of products, so as to continuously meet the potential needs of users. At the same time, through the analysis of data, according to the feedback brought to us by the data, we carry out continuous optimization and iteration, and dare to insist on the right and give up the wrong.
In the special project of organizational structure adjustment, based on the division of products sold in the customer group at the beginning of the year, the original system plan was to purchase solution products through the LTC process of front-end system 1, and purchase post-level tool products to follow the LTC process of self-developed front-end system 2.
However, I soon found out that the actual business could not divide the products so clearly, and the solution products may be sold together with the tool products when they are sold, and the solution products may also be promoted when the position-level products are sold in order to expand the market.
Therefore, our system solution should also be more flexible, after negotiating with the marketing service digital department to optimize the plan as quickly as possible, cancel the restrictions on product issuance in the original plan, and add the early warning function of unsound product information in the front-end system, so as to quickly support the iteration of the original plan and adapt to the requirements of business variability.
At the same time, we analyzed repetitive manual operations and tried to unify and automate the process.
Taking document transfer as an example, I found that basically from the end of February to March for a month and a half, I was tired of dealing with the needs of customer allocation and historical document transfer that may be reported every day, and manually allocated in the system, and the number of documents manually allocated by data statistics exceeded 15w of the amount of documents;
In addition, some document allocations are initiated directly from the front-end and are not notified to the back-end system, resulting in problems such as inconsistent data and interface errors.
I summarized the scope of documents involved in document transfer in ERP and the corresponding adjustment fields, which can be operated using standard functions, which need to be executed in the background, and how to keep logs, and took the initiative to discuss the feasibility of automatic transfer with the solution system department, and optimized the existing personnel handover functions and interfaces.
And extend the optimization experience to the position-level LTC process to optimize the performance splitting function. Finally, the back-end system can support the automatic allocation of documents across customer groups, cross-branches within customer groups, and cross-departments within branches.
Attached: Manual document transfer to automatic transfer.
Summary:Embrace change and respond to change more than follow a plan; Use data to observe and analyze the results, and think about how to complete the solution with the minimum cost on the original functions to achieve rapid iteration.
Respect the complexity of multiple systems
Efficient docking with peripheral systems
In modern enterprise applications, multiple systems are often combined, and the collaborative working group between multiple systems becomes a real business system, and each product system does not exist in isolation, but is a link in the entire business flow. Therefore, we need to have a global thinking in the project process, rather than a tool thinking based on a functional point.
1) Think about technical solutions from the perspective of product and system integration and avoid fragmentation
Being responsible for the implementation and delivery of the solution often leads me to focus too much on the technical details and neglect the whole.
It is necessary to think about what kind of value the demand brings to the user, help the user solve the problems encountered in what scenarios, and at the same time ensure the stability of the docking of multiple systems and the minimum transformation cost.
For example, I have stepped on such a pit, only considering the standardization and unification of the group's product level to provide product data basis for the standardization of business analysis, thinking that the materials of ERP are the product source of all front-end systems, and the front-end system should be unified and standardized in accordance with the combing of ERP, ignoring that the front-end system will also have its own logical control at the product level, resulting in problems such as product selection and statistical analysis of the front-end system.
2) Reasonable**, reserved scalability:
In the process of making requirements, the most uncomfortable thing is the uncertainty and flexibility of requirements, both to have rules and to allow skipping rules in special scenarios, so when designing system solutions, business models and data models, it is necessary to appropriately consider whether there is a possibility of future business changes, and reserve the part in advance that is convenient for later changes.
For example, the ERP suite software is not strong in terms of flexibility, and the content that may change through the configuration table or configuration items is used to reduce the hard work and realize the functional switch; Reserve extensibility fields and methods when connecting to peripheral systems, and put some verification rules or calculation rules into more flexible and configurable middleware or front-end systems for processing.
Summary:From the global perspective of multiple systems, coordinate the constraints and associations between various systems to achieve an organic combination of 1+1>2.
A broader design thinking and product perspective
Commercialize the standard version of the solution
Resources are always limited, but the needs of users are unlimited, so while sticking to the iterative path and product goals, we should think about whether the system solution can be further standardized, so as to achieve maximum effect with the least time and effort.
For example, within the ERP system, the general function is used as a function group for different modules to call; In terms of integration, a single function point is integrated into a unified interface for peripheral system calling.
In addition, it is necessary to fully explore the commonality of requirements, balance "demand" and "cost", provide scenario-specific standardization capabilities, and abstract them into a minimum usable product module.
For example, without destroying the closed loop of the business, the path of the business process is deleted as much as possible; Merge scenes by merging items of the same kind.
On top of this, the "decoupling of common requirements and platformization of general capabilities" will decouple the general parts from the main product, and build blocks through the platform for flexible business selection.
Conclusion:
In the digital age, the intersection of products and projects will only increase.
Everything is a product, and everything can be managed with project management.
In traditional project management, product thinking is introduced, and user thinking and data thinking are used to actively analyze problems, think and explore the real purpose and value of users; Give full play to the sense of ownership to solve problems, continuously iterate and optimize, and productize solutions to solve problems through standardized methods.