These 77 PMs and Engineers Helped 115 Hospitals in 7 Days

As an ordinary person, what can you do in the fight against the novel coronavirus? Perhaps most people contribute by staying at home. But there are also some people who use the thinking of product managers and engineers to provide timely assistance to hundreds of hospitals to solve the urgent needs of frontline workers.

What can we do in the face of the epidemic? This is probably a question that many people have thought about these days.

Recently, a WeChat group consisting of 77 product managers, engineers, and designers handed in an astonishing answer:

From January 25 to February 1, in just one week, they helped 115 hospitals, raised more than 480,000 yuan, and donated more than 10,000 pieces of medical supplies.

One of the participants said: This group is like a ray of light in a bad day. Everything has cracks, that's where the light comes in.

Yo! Group: A WeChat group that speaks with actions

This happened in a WeChat group. Yo! Groupstory.

This group is a 7-year-old WeChat group, originally a place for daily communication or sending red envelopes during the Spring Festival. What is slightly different is that it now brings together several product managers and engineers from major Internet companies.

The incident originated from the fact that on New Year's Eve, members of the group saw the doctors and nurses on the front line facing a shortage of supplies, and came up with the idea of "doing their best".

Once you have an idea, take action immediately.

On the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year,Yo! group sent out the first donation, totaling 86,700 yuan.Donated to Wuhan University Education Development Foundation.

Then some events happened, which made us understand thatWhat is most lacking is not money, but supplies.Therefore, the group quickly opened up another path: donating supplies. 

Analyze pain points and find the right position 

Just like solving product problems, they are also exploring how to optimize the issue of material donations using the same mindset as solving product problems.

In the view of this volunteer, the entire donation process is to quickly find hospitals in urgent need of assistance and available medical supplies.

If you analyze and refine any matter, you can find its key points. The donation problem is to solve the problem of optimizing the collection and distribution of materials. However, Yo! Group chose the latter which will be ignored.

Therefore, the team started with a very clear positioning: for those hospitals that are easily overlooked, provide them with some emergency supplies before the coordinated supplies arrive, so as to avoid risks to medical staff.

The principle followed is "serving the weak and giving priority to emergency relief", and supplies are distributed according to the severity of the epidemic.

Under this policy, an activity that was initially initiated by some familiar friends has gradually become a platform that has played a huge role.

Standardize processes and race against time 

The product managers in the group showed off their skills and connected the links as quickly as possible.

The first batch of goggles was delivered to doctors at the Jiangxia District Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital in Wuhan at noon on the second day of the Chinese New Year.

According to the project participants, this is considered to be a successful implementation of the MVP.But the most important thing is to find a standardized process (SOP) to make this model run faster and more.

In order to rationalize the collaboration of members and maintain higher efficiency, after consultation, three main lines were gradually sorted out:

The first line: Arrange special people to purchase materials. Use your own channels and methods to purchase and gather materials as much as possible.

The second line: Find suitable hospitals and distribute the supplies. Connect with hospitals and medical staff in need by publishing messages.

The third line: responsible for exchanging information and resources with other similar non-governmental charitable organizations, synchronizing the latest situation with others, and solving the problem of information asymmetry.

According to group member Ma Li, volunteers supporting Wuhan and surrounding areas are divided into "Resource Group", "Hospital Group", "Finance Group" and "Logistics Group".The responsibilities of the four groups of volunteers are:

• The "Resource Group" is responsible for connecting with various resources, such as donation resources, material manufacturers, etc.
• The "Hospital Group" is responsible for collecting hospital information and distributing supplies;
• The "Finance Team" is responsible for financial records and payments;
• The Logistics Team is responsible for logistics follow-up.

Specifically,Resource GroupTheir work includes collecting original data. They will collect resource information that is actively submitted from the outside, including the brand, model, quantity, production standard, shipping time, the city where the items are located, and whether the delivery needs coordination.

After the person in charge of the "Resource Group" confirms that the resources meet the standards and the manufacturer is reliable, he/she will contact the "Finance Group" to purchase them and transfer the information to the person in charge of the "Hospital Group".

Hospital GroupThey are responsible for collecting hospital information, including the hospital name, level, contact person's name, department, position, telephone number, number of medical staff on duty who have contact with COVID-19-related patients, number of confirmed cases, filling in information, and allocating supplies to these hospitals.

Next, Logistics GroupTo arrange delivery for these collected hospital addresses.

Finance GroupThe main job is to update the expenditure information into the financial form. You can design the form according to your own situation.

By standardizing each process, they built a complete system, establishing interface standards down to every detail.

The member in charge of finance in the team said, "We formulated SOP (standard operating procedure) because we want to ensure that these medical devices can reach the front line smoothly. We don't want our efforts to be in vain, and we don't want the medical devices we send out to be fake."

This group of Internet product managers came up with ideas for product development and solved the time difference problem before the coordinated materials were fully allocated.

A small WeChat group with its own light

The result of their efforts was that in just one week, the small WeChat group exploded with huge energy.

During these 7 days of racing against time, the Yo! group donated a total of 6,300 N95 masks, 50,000 disposable medical masks, and 6,375 goggles, providing material connection and assistance to 115 hospitals in the epidemic areas.

Through this group of lovely people, not only did the donated materials arrive accurately at the places where they were most needed, but also because of the methods summarized through this joint collaboration, a platform was created that can benefit more people.

In a blink of an eye, the work start date has arrived, and this group of shining people have to return to their jobs.

It only took one week to hand over the project platform launched from incubation financing to "Zhuan Zhuan" for corresponding maintenance and development, and it has now been partially commercialized.

In addition, the method developed in this incident will benefit more people. According to the person in charge, many charity organizations have adopted this method.

Make the world a little better

Those who participated in the process also expressed their own feelings calmly:

This is the first time I feel that small people can make real contributions to society by working together. I am very happy and moved.

@Tantan-VP-Han Zhibai

I am honored to do something with all the hard-working bosses. I recently saw a sentence from White House economic adviser Kudlow, and I deeply agree with it: We just want to help people. This is a decent human instinct.

@Freelance-Product Manager-Liu Fei

What is the original intention of a product manager? I think it is to make the world a little better, even if it is just a little more incremental value.

This time we did three things: 1) point-to-point provision of emergency supplies to many hospitals; 2) efficient search for resources and improved distribution efficiency; 3) exporting experience and resources to more volunteers and charity groups to empower everyone

I believe that this is not only a charity event, but also a product exploration, which provides some help in structurally solving real-life problems.

I hope to become a product manager who can give full play to my abilities, work steadily, dilute negative energy with positive energy, maintain passion, and create value.

@Zhiqun-CEO-Ma Li

Sources:

1. 77 Internet product managers decided to support Wuhan. Here are their experiences https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/SUjGNSe_fm_R4WEtF1kaoA

2. Zhihu answer: What else can ordinary people do to fight the new coronavirus? https://www.zhihu.com/question/367810004/answer/995245140

3. Summary and thoughts https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/ZxIJq0OxJg5mkUxnGgXtww

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