Project manager, can you draw prototypes? Does the project manager need to do product design?

background

During the interview, great Xia , The interviewer asked such a question ：“ If customers have new needs , As a project manager, how to deal with it ？”

Great Xia thought , How simple the problem is , capture an enemy easily . This problem should consider the scope of the project 、 Demand value 、 Required duration 、 Customer relationship and other factors , After analyzing the advantages and disadvantages of the situation at that time, make a comprehensive judgment .

But Daxia, it's not time to talk about these factors , The interviewer added ：“ As a delivery manager ？ What about the new demands put forward by customers and beyond the standard products ？ How do you deal with it ？ in addition , You have done requirement design , Can draw prototypes ？”

After hearing such questions from the interviewer , Your first reaction is ： It's not easy to be a project manager in this company .

project manager , Can you draw prototypes ？

This seems to be a very simple problem , Just let the great Xia know ：

1、 Maybe team members only include developers

2、 Maybe the project manager only needs to go to the site , Other members in the company

3、 Maybe the team doesn't have a product manager

4、 Maybe the customer needs , But there is not much demand , Looking for someone to take charge of the project , I need to do some design by the way

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Although in the end, great Xia refused such an opportunity , But it has triggered new thinking of the great Xia ： Does the project manager need to do product design ？

Product manager and project manager

Product manager and project manager have always been two positions with unclear division of blame .

Su Jie is 《 Everyone is a product manager 》 In the said ：“ The product manager —— By thinking . Product managers do the right thing , Whether the products it leads meet the needs of the market , Whether it can bring profits to the company . project manager —— By doing . The project manager is to do things right , Make things perfect , In time 、 Achieve goals under cost and resource constraints .”

But he also said ：“ The company decided to let the product manager concurrently serve as the project manager , I hope to let the person who is responsible for the business objectives take control of it , In terms of business objectives 、 Project resources 、 Balance under various constraints such as user experience , Solve the problem of inconsistent goals .”

Do I mean , The ultimate goal of the product manager is the project manager ！ The ultimate goal of the project manager is the product manager ？

I don't know the answer , But no matter what position you are in , As long as you are more professional than others , Know more than others , To be a man of honor .

Does the project manager need to do product design ？

Why should the project manager do product design ？

In fact as early as 20 Years ago , One of the tasks that the project manager needs to do is to analyze the needs . But from different perspectives, the reasons why project managers need to do product design are also different .

From the company's point of view ：

In order to save resources , If one can do work , Then recruiting another person is a waste of cost .

If there is not much demand design work on the project , And most of the work still needs to coordinate resources 、 draw up a plan , Then recruit a project manager who can analyze requirements and design products , In this way, we can do some simple product work , Can also give consideration to the work of the project manager .

There's another situation , If a company is small , Then there may be a situation that the product manager and the project manager are one person .

From the perspective of development ：

The project manager needs to feed back the customer's needs to the product manager , After the product manager completes the design, it will be handed over to the development . This leads to repeated turnover , The content of requirements will deviate , More likely to increase the risk of project changes .

therefore , If the project manager contacts the customer , Analyze and design the requirements , Then communicate with customers , In this way, demand turnover can be avoided 、“ circulate erroneous reports ” The situation of .

From the perspective of project manager ：

Project managers need to understand the business , Because on the one hand, we need to communicate with customers about their needs , On the other hand, we also need to track the development progress . If you don't know the product , Then you will be very passive in these two aspects , This is the case , The customer said that the business project manager did not understand , The progress of development cannot be controlled as a whole .

summary

Workplace , There is always the question of whether there is a chicken or an egg first —— How much money is paid and how much work is done .

however , If a project manager wants to grow, he needs to know what the members of the project team know , Understand what team members don't understand , That's the only way , To continuously improve their leadership , The corresponding post salary will continue to increase .