1.
I often hear this question.
"Does a planner need to understand development too?"
Well, I am not someone who graduated from a prestigious university, nor do I work at a big company or a startup everyone knows, so I do not really know what kind of answer would be appropriate or effective for a question like 'Should a planner know development too?' or what answer people are actually hoping to hear. On top of that, I personally tend to believe that there is no unchanging right answer to any issue. There are only different positions., so...
So when I get a question like this, I usually just answer it by asking what that person would expect from others if they were in a different situation.
"Do you personally think a web designer must have web development knowledge? Or do you think it does not matter?"
And sometimes I get more personal questions too.
"Why are you studying development this much? Are you trying to switch careers?"
Then I answer like this.
"I am just curious, haha. And it is fascinating and fun, isn't it?! What about you?"
2.
What one person does 'just because they are curious'
can become, for someone else, an option to choose from, something like 'Should I do it or not?' or 'Is it efficient or inefficient?'.
I did not say all of this in response to a casually thrown question, all the way through a second verse,
but if I were to express my more personal intentions and desires through this post instead...
(The king has donkey ears~ haha) ...
Planner? Designer? Whoever it is, what is needed for anyone, not just as a mere office worker, but as a working professional, is not a family-registry-like recipe, form, or rule, but the cause and intention of an event provided from outside, and self-driven motivation or willingness from within the individual.
Of course, if you do that, you might not be able to expect efficiency in your work. It may even end up intensifying the errors of overgeneralization instead.
But if you can focus a little more on why and how rather than what, then one day, even in irregular situations that inevitably arise, you may be able to avoid getting completely 'stuck' and instead solve them with a clean 'click'... or at the very least, even if later than ideal, you may encounter a moment when you say, 'Ah!' and genuinely understand and relate.
If you take interest in and care for the ingredients themselves, you can create a richer variety of dishes instead of being limited to just one fixed recipe menu. The same will be true of the products we want to make.
If the direction of a product is not thin margins and high volume, then concerns about price and delivery time naturally become lighter or lower in priority than before. In other words, instead of focusing on so-called value-for-money customers who move like migratory birds according to the prices and events of the market or competitors, you can secure the room to focus on and communicate with customers who willingly subscribe and bookmark based on emotional satisfaction. That, in turn, allows more flexible and effective responses.
3.
Even among the countless cafe owners out there, there are more owners, baristas, than you might expect who cannot even drink coffee. And among them, there are also many who make a lot of money. Yes, that is reality.
There may be a moderate correlation between sincerity, efficiency, and profitability, but their relationship can never become a causal one.
If there is work given to me, then of course I handle that work as it is.
As for everything beyond that, I just do it according to my own standards. Efficiency and industry cut lines are not part of the criteria here.
The title of this post is my own extremely subjective answer, from a completely anonymous person, to the question, 'Does a planner need to understand development too?'
Simply put, if you are curious, do it. If not, there are still many ways to do your job well without going as far as development.
It is just that the standard for doing something well differs from person to person and from organization to organization. For some, it may mean maximum profit with minimum learning. For others, it may simply be personal satisfaction. For someone else, it may be the evaluation or recognition of others.
Perhaps these differences can be described as fit, grain, or temperature.
When it comes to answers about the role, scope, and attitude toward any kind of work, I think it may be better to listen to your own voice rather than asking others.
That is because I do not think the scope of your work or learning is something that should be judged on the basis of outside evaluation, efficiency, rather than on the values you personally hold, your inner intention and judgment.
Sometimes there are categories where the problem itself, or the question itself, matters more than the answer. This question is one of them.
For example, if someone asks, 'Money has been tight lately and I am worried, and a family member's birthday is tomorrow. Would it be okay to just let it pass?' or 'Do I really have to rinse delivery food containers once with water before throwing them away?' those are questions that leave you speechless before you even start thinking about an answer. That is my honest personal feeling, though I suspect it may be an overly hasty and generalized personal bias that I never quite say out loud.
As with the everyday examples above, this question contains something similar. For planners, things like problem solving, wants, and completed development matter less than understanding and empathizing with user needs, the user journey through the product, awareness of pain points, reinterpretation of problems, delivery tracking, and a funnel mindset. So this question includes, to a considerable degree, a low level of awareness about those aspects. That is why it feels like the kind of question that leaves you speechless, carrying a bitter and at times disappointing undertone.
The days when we dealt with math-exam problems that had clear right answers are already over, are they not... ;;;
PS.
These days, it seems that people use the expression service planner or product manager more often than just planner. Service and product...
Then what does the user think? How much development knowledge about that product does a user expect from the service planner or product manager who plans the service and product that the user experiences through something they personally choose and use with their own time and money?
That is right. It depends.
That is right. This is not a question to ask an industry worker or a senior at work. It is a question to ask yourself, or the users who use, or will use, the product you made.
That common thing called UX, or that seemingly grand thing called psychology, does not apply only to the GUI inside a screen.
It is like a nonsense quiz: the more seriously you take it, the more bitter a question it becomes.
PS2. Advice for surviving among overflowing competitors in an era of planning, design, and development done by memorization (feat. halo effect)
..
That is all, really.
