The eleven people in the Microsoft product group or the author of the Net Microsoft Product Group, the first one is the product planner. The main task of product planners is to investigate, including investigating your competitors, customers, and other market demand. The process of product planning is the process of defining the product. They usually do a lot of research, through tracking market users, making market surveys, and see industry reports, thus identifying development planning for products from three to five years. In fact, as the most important point of product planners, there must be forward-looking. It is not only what the market is now, but what will be seen after three to five years. We can see that Microsoft has a lot of products, there is a saying that "Version 3.0" is called "Version 3.0", it may be not very good at 1.0, 2.0, it is possible to be a functional problem, or it may be the forefront of the market, like windows, it is No matter from hardware or software applications, there is no market, but through constant improvements, it has achieved great success. From this point of view, product planners are very important. The second type of person is product management personnel. Somewindness is a bit similar to the traditional market personnel, but it is not exactly the same. Their main task is to bring products to the market. Includes the positioning, packaging of the decision. The most important thing is to convey an information to the user. That is, why users buy your product or upgrade to your product. Many people say that Microsoft's products have done well in addition to quality. IE IE is an example of a good market. For example, IE initial user positioning, not trying to get Netscape existing users to go to IE, never did it. But is new Internet users. This is the user's positioning very clear. In addition, the different versions of IE, the development side focus, you need to tell users with a simple information, what is the benefit of this version than other versions. These are all product management personnel to do. The next role is program management, we used to manage project management, but when I was in Shanghai, the student said that they said that the domestic project manager did very different, so I was called program management. Sometimes I may exchange. In Microsoft, the program management is mainly a product, and the appropriate product is launched when appropriate. The most important difficulty he encounters is how to maintain control. It means that you must control the release schedule of your product, you can't have delays. Everyone knows that uncertainty in the process is human factors, this release date is controlled, which is very difficult. There is also the right to pay. Sometimes you will need to make hits between the release date and the new features, or not to take new technology, use new tools, what is the algorithm, what do we need to do, what to do, don't do? Between, make hosted, control the characteristics of the product and make it meet market demand. Program managers need to measure the risk of doing these things, need to be quite clear. These three types of people put the plan, push the market, and product development process control, which can be the most critical. The remaining product design is mainly designed for user interfaces or visualization of products. These people generally have design backgrounds. Like Microsoft's products, it is not a lot to focus on user interface design or user interaction, because traditional PCs are just professional tools. But now grows to consumers, the main use of the initiator, so it is getting higher and higher for interface design requirements. The company has invested great manpower in this regard. I don't know that everyone will see new Windows XP, or like "MSN Explorer", these products are compared to traditional products, including users. They are totally different, more paying more attention is a whole experience, experience. Product design has an important job, which is to ensure that all visual parts of the product remain consistent.
Different modules or different features may be developed by different personnel, how to ensure that the visual part looks like, the user does not feel that the product is not the same company, depending on the product designer. The fifth person is the product availability assessment engineer, which is mainly to ensure that the product is available, easy to use, and can be easily accepted by the user. Generally in the process of product development, there are some different prototypes, which is how to do some features, how to interact, design some different prototypes, and then pay the availability assessment engineers to do availability testing. Thereby determines the final solution. Microsoft has always attached great importance to this. You may notice that in the earlier version of IE, there is no "Go" button in the address bar, just there is an address bar. But later, through the availability test, some users have been knocking in the address, just waiting, do not know if they press it. There is really a person. So starting from 5.0 to add a button after addressing the Lan. After the user knocked the address, you can try to press the button to connect to the web page he needs. The next category is the developer. Developers should be very important in Microsoft, but I feel that it is not like some companies in our country. The developer's main work, part of the design of some algorithms, documentation or characteristic of PM, explains its own feedback. There is also a more important piece, which is to help PM launch the product schedule. When can I do "Beta" 1, 2, when can I release it. These are closely related to developers, so developers determine its progress. In addition, it is usually written code, programming and debugging, and later defect repair. The next part is the tester. Microsoft attaches great importance to the test. Test staff are completed independently during product development. It is not subject to other people, independently completes the test. In addition, in some cases, as a spokesperson of the user, put the interests of the user first. If you think this product does not work, you must insist. Of course, this often causes some intense debates, and the decision does not solve it. But the final result is to benefit from users. Then the next category is Microsoft's unique localization. I would like to be very applicable to everyone. But how we will introduce our products to the world, there is a global process, and there is also a process of meeting the requirements of other countries outside China through localization, so there will be this demand in the future. There is also a type of person to publish the documentation, which includes the documentation in the website, the document inside, which is mainly to help users use the product. There is also a developer, do some code example, which is the main job of documentation. The development document we traditionally discussed is done in Microsoft is PM, which is that all program managers have a very detailed characteristic description for each feature. There is also a class of people who are product support staff. This is also very important in Microsoft. On the one hand, Microsoft has the most common way to deal with end users. There are often many users call this problem, and will solve it in the next version in the next version. There is also the most important thing in Microsoft. Every time the user is in a call, it is necessary to spend money. In fact, product support directly affects the company's turnover. Provides faster and more efficient user support is the most important part. The last role is operational management, actually is the website operation management. Everyone also knows that Microsoft products are currently increasingly integrated with the Internet, like the "Hotmail", "MSN Calendar", which we are doing now, it is a website. Operating management roles have not been, this is just a new role in the past two or three years, which will become more and more important in the future. Because you are different from the traditional products that make so-called packaging. I used to say that I finished the CD, and the product was released, it was fine. Because the user bought the product, you have already made money.
When you do connecting machine online services, your software is just a beginning, users need to spend money as long as you use you, you will affect your entire profit. In fact, online management is very complicated, such as "Hotmail", now there is more than one million users. There are about more than 5,000 servers at the front end to run Windows 2000 to meet the user login. There are also many servers in the background, and the storage is a very complex system, because there is a bottom-level network, there is hardware, and the operating system, and the above, add the Internet itself. Determined environment. How to manage this complex system is very challenging. Because it is different from the traditional app, the user can go away at any time. And there are still many uncertainties, the more users buy, the more money I earn, the more money I earn. But when connecting machines, users may also be a problem, that is, you may not support so many users. For example, there are many people to visit, your website is not to meet the needs of so many users. Website Operations often need to have traffic in advance, or make more accurate predictions for users. Operation management is increasingly important in Microsoft, while many of the products will affect you can run well. So this also puts new requirements for other people. At present, it is basically, running management, product planning, product management and procedures management These four people are actually the process of promoting the product. Others play a passive, or focus on the role of specific things. But every role is indispensable. As we told Microsoft now there is basically eleven types. How to organize these people to invest more effectively during the development process? Microsoft is currently basically a so-called block structure. The most basic organization within the company is a product unit, such as IE is a product unit group. The managers of the product unit group will have budgets, some people have money. In each product unit, in the administrative, according to your type of work, like the project manager, he will have a head leader, such as the developer has a development team leader, the tester is also. This is an administrative organization. The administrative organizational structure is mainly to make some assessments for your performance, including the future will give you the process. When you do a product, in each product cell group, it is divided into different items in each product group, and the basic principle of dividing is to develop by a very well-smaller team. Because I said that it is necessary to divide the organization according to the different characteristics of the product, so that you can divide a small module and a small feature when product design, and then there is no great dependency between each other. Because the cross-group interaction or cross-group compliance is the most difficult management. Every team is basically project managers, or the program manager to lead, to be responsible for a feature, there will be developers under the following, there will be testers, basically developers and testers are generally a one more, so A group is almost ten people, which is the most basic development unit. Some decisions related to technology are basically the project manager, and there will be no more than about your decision. This organizational structure can make some decisions in some business and technology, while each group can move the big team quickly like a small team, efficiency will not be affected. Give the IE product group as an example. It has different people in different periods, and the number of people is different. The earlie IE1.0 is a few people, IE2.0 may be three or forty people, and it is basically 300 items in IE4. In the 300-person project group, it is such a system, which is the product unit manager, because it is the most basic unit in the product unit, so the product unit manager is the big boss.
There are five product planners, the product manager has 20, the project manager, hundreds of developers, one hundred testers, there are documents, because IE also has some SDK, and some online webpages And help files. There are ten documents. Such a person structure is also determined according to the characteristics of the product, or you can decide on this version in the middle of your side. Also in the IE product group. At IE5.5, there are more than 300 people, but at this time, the project manager has only 15 people, much more than IE4, and there are only 40 people, because of IE5.5, basically large The characteristics have been stable, IE5.5 has less work to end users, mainly in terms of stability and performance, and other support for users of some company companies, the number of developers and project managers have decreased However, there are many testers, 200 testers, this is mainly in IE4, so tested independent test team when IE5. The IE industry group is divided into ten project groups, and each group has about 10 to 50 people, basically responsible for a product module, like browsing, or HTML editing, printing. However, some time a project manager will be responsible for more than one feature, and even some developers may have expertise in some respects, and he also needs to flow between different organizations, so this organization is actually a dynamic. Let's talk about the Microsoft product development process. The basic principle of development process is, I hope that the big project is divided into several miletonous development cycles, and some redundancy should be considered at all cycles, making your development cycle more actual. By the target description, all people will be developed in the same direction. Use the product characteristic description to guide the development process. At the same time, the user's data is used to determine some of the characteristics, or the priority schedule. Add this feature, not the developer feel good, I will do this, often from the user's perspective, users have more benefits from the middle to decide. There is more important to uniform terms. Training similar to this is also a training in Microsoft, which will make a lecture, which takes more than six or seven hours. Among them, there are many terms, abbreviations, and introductions to this development model. This guarantees that all people are unified. This way you can guarantee that when you do things or discuss, everyone's understanding is the same. Another point is to test uninterrupted during the development of the product, rather than doing it, and starts testing, because it is often too late at that time. The Microsoft product development process is divided into four stages. The first stage is the planning phase. This stage is basically driven by product planners and project managers. This stage is mainly to complete such things: one is a target description. Based on this product goal, we already know, what we need to do, what characteristics do to achieve this goal, which determines which features of the product. Then PM will write corresponding specification descriptions based on this feature. General product specifications, it is traditional technical documentation, basically written twice, first write a simple, list your feature or your feature wants to achieve any requirements, and our entire product Which related, product compliance, why do this feature. After the characteristics of this page, everyone will sit together to see a look, scheduled a priority, what we can do first, what is possible, or which is what is the next version. After completing this matter, the program manager will write a more detailed characteristic instructions, which is a technical documentation for the development and testing the entire process. There are basically generally some templates.
