Career transition from software developer to product manager---软件开发者向产品经理的职业转型

软件开发者向产品经理的职业转型

Question from a reader

一个读者的问题：

I have been a software developer for seven years now. I’m getting tired of coding. I’d like to transition to product management. What should I do?

我已经做了七年的软件开发。我已经厌倦了编码。我想转型为产品经理。我该如何做呢？

My answer

我的回答

Making a career transition is never easy. The key is that you must leverage your strength while identifying opportunity to demonstrate you’re capable of doing the new job.

职业转型向来就不是容易的。关键在于当机会来临的时候，你必须运用你的实力来证明你能够做好新的工作。

As a software developer, your strength is that you have a strong technical foundation, and this will enable you to understand how developers think and work, and work effectively with the development team. You need to keep this in mind. I’d suggest you first to make a transition to technical PM –- product management job that involves a strong technical component. This will make the transition easier for you.

作为一名软件开发人员，你的优势在于你有一个强大的技术基础，这将能够让你理解开发者是如何想和工作的，并且知道和开发团队高效的工作。你需要牢记这点。我建议你先转型为技术项目经理——产品管理工作同擅长的技术实力的一个介入点。这将使转型更容易一些。

You also need to change your mind set. As a software developer, your tendency is problem solving, which means you have the tendency to dive into details. However, as product manager, a very important part of your job is to make sure that the product team is solving the right market problem. You need to understand the big picture, and ask “why” before getting into “how”. Ask yourself the following questions before you think about “how”

你也需要改变你的想法。作为一名软件开发人员，你的方向是解决问题，这就意味着你必须全力关注细节。然而，作为一个产品经理，一个非常重要的工作就是确保产品团队正在解决的是一个正确的市场问题。你需要把握大局，在开始”how”之前一定要问”why”。在考虑”how”之前要问问自己以下的问题：

Why do we need this project/enhancement/new feature?

我们为什么需要这个项目/增强功能/增加新的特征？

What customer needs are we adding?

我们增加的是客户需要的吗？

What’s the problem statement?

问题是什么？

Can we leverage any existing solutions instead of developing a new solution?

我们能够利用现有的一个解决方案，而不是设计一个新的解决方案？

What is the projected financial returns on this product? How are the returns comparing to the cost of developing the product?

这个产品的目标经济回报是什么？这个回报同产品的开发成本相比如何？

You need to establish the mindset that you’re the “mini CEO” of a product. What will a CEO be worried about? He wants to see the product addresses specific customer needs so that the company can sell a lot of the products and make a lot of money profitably.

你需要在你的产品上建立”小CEO”的思维框架。CEO在关注什么？他期望的是看到产品完全符合目标客户的需要，从而使公司能够卖出大量的产品，挣更多的钱。