This course is for anyone who wants to become an elite product manager, whether that means stepping into a more advanced PM role or preparing to make a career switch. Build a strong foundation of product analysis and problem-solving skills, develop your own MVP and learn how to nail your first big product pitch, with an expert Product Lead from Google by your side.
This is not a sign-up-and-forget online course. You’ll learn and practice in live lectures every week, with direct feedback from the instructor on your projects and weekly opportunities to engage with her and your peers throughout. You’ll conclude your learning with product pitch training with Valerie to prepare you to land your dream job.
Valerie will give you feedback on your analysis and assignments throughout the course. She’ll use her 20 years’ experience developing products for companies like Microsoft, eBay, and Google to help you build your own slide deck ready for the C-suite.
We'll kick off with a lightning tour of product fundamentals. We'll look at what a product manager is (and isn't). Then we'll dig into the core of product thinking - defining the problem. We'll look at popular products across entertainment, fitness, gaming, e-Commerce and others and discuss: What is the product really solving for? What is its special sauce that differentiates it from the competition?
Project #1
Throughout the course, you'll build a slide deck as a portfolio of your product thinking. Today you'll choose an existing product to use as an anchor for the rest of the course. Using your anchor product, create a slide that shows:
Who is your customer? We'll talk about target markets and customer profiles, and how they can shape crucial decisions in a product. Once you know your core value proposition and your customer, we start on one of the best parts of being a PM - what would we build next? You'll dream up the next big feature for your anchor product and start understanding how big the opportunity is.
Project #2
Every flavor of product management has the customer at its core. How do you know what your customers need? Today is all about decoding signals - what are your customers telling you every time they click, every time they query, every time they purchase. We'll look at how to divine signals from user research, logs and industry data. Finally, you'll apply these techniques to your new feature idea.
Project #3
Product strategy can give PMs serious writer's block. We'll break down strategy vs vision, tactics and roadmaps, and talk about how strategy is related to the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Finally, we'll work through how to define an MVP for your new feature.
Project #4
Today is about product performance, the wonderful world of metrics. We'll cover key metrics used at billion-dollar tech companies and startups alike, including DAUs, MAUs, UUs, CSAT, CLV and other metrics acronyms that are common PM parlance. Most importantly, we'll look at one of the most critical questions for any product: What is the northstar metric?
Project #5
You know your customer. You have your strategy and your roadmap, and you know what you'll use to measure success. Let's get to launching! We'll cover go-to-market plans for new products and features, talk about marketing, PR, distribution, and what can go wrong.
Project #6
Launching a product is the beginning; now we make it better. Today we'll look at product optimization, including conversion funnels, guest modes and account creation, and the famous "leaky bucket". We'll also cover gamification, which is widely used in all kinds of products, not just games.
Project #7
Today we'll look at the different flavors of PMing: consumer apps, B2B, platforms, research, software vs hardware, front-end vs back-end and others, and what would make someone amazing at each. We'll discuss the cross-functional team PMs interact with - Engineering, Design, Marketing, PR, Legal, Privacy, Policy, Research, Analytics, etc. What does each bring to the table, and who should be your new best friend? Finally, we'll turn to you as the product. What's your elevator pitch for yourself?
Project #8
Practice pitching your idea and getting stakeholders bought in and excited.
Project #9
This is serious PM-ing. We'll work on boiling it down, simplifying a complex message into a punchy narrative. Finally, we'll have a couple stories from my 20 years working in Silicon Valley tech, including some of the best "aha moments" and things I wish I'd known when I was first starting in Product.