Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals

About this course: Not so long ago, the job of product manager was about assessing market data, creating requirements, and managing the hand-off to sales/marketing. Maybe you’d talk to a customer somewhere in there and they’d tell you what features they wanted. But companies that manage product that way are dying. Being a product person today is a new game, and product managers are at the center of it. Today, particularly if your product is mostly digital, you might update it several times a day. Massive troves of data are available for making decisions and, at the same time, deep insights into customer motivation and experience are more important than ever. The job of the modern product manager is to charter a direction and create a successful working environment for all the actors involved in product success. It’s not a simple job or an easy job, but it is a meaningful job where you’ll be learning all the time. This course will help you along your learning journey and prepare you with the skills and perspective you need to: Create the actionable focus to successfully manage your product (week 1) Focus your work using modern product management methods (week 2) Manage new products and explore new product ideas (week 3) Manage and amplify existing products (week 4) This course is ideal for current product or general managers interested in today's modern product management methods. This course was developed with the generous support of the Batten Institute at UVA’s Darden School of Business. The Batten Institute’s mission is to improve the world through entrepreneurship and innovation: www.batteninstitute.org.

Who is this class for: This course is designed for anyone interested in becoming a product manager, including current project or product managers who want to learn modern fundamentals.

Created by:  University of Virginia

• Taught by:  Alex Cowan, Faculty & Batten Fellow

  Darden School of Business

Level Beginner Commitment 4 weeks of study, 4-6 hours/week Language English How To Pass Pass all graded assignments to complete the course. User Ratings 4.7 stars Average User Rating 4.7See what learners said Coursework

Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects.

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University of Virginia A premier institution of higher education, The University of Virginia offers outstanding academics, world-class faculty, and an inspiring, supportive environment. Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819, the University is guided by his vision of discovery, innovation, and development of the full potential of students from all walks of life. Through these courses, global learners have an opportunity to study with renowned scholars and thought leaders.

Syllabus


WEEK 1


Achieving Focus and #Winning



As a product manager, you and your team will always have more ideas and more requests than you can possibly manage. Making matters still more complicated, part of your job is to develop and then ‘sell’ a particular view of what should happen with your product to diverse stakeholders (engineering, marketing, etc.). How do you do it? Success requires an actionable, testable focus. The successful product manager identifies vivid, testable customer outcomes and creates focus around them. This week we’ll show you how to interface effectively with all your stakeholders to create that actionable focus.


19 videos, 1 reading, 2 practice quizzes expand

1. Video: Tomorrow's Product Manager
2. Reading: Course Overview & Requirements
3. Discussion Prompt: Get to know your classmates
4. Video: You, the Product Manager
5. Video: Why Is a Product Never a Product?
6. Video: You and Your Customer
7. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on the #Winning PM
8. Video: You and Your Design Team
9. Video: You and Your Development Team
10. Video: Product Manager vs. Product Owner
11. Video: Greg Cohen on PM vs. PO?
12. Video: What Is Data Science?
13. Video: You and Your Data Science Team
14. Video: Meet Enable Quiz, Our Startup Company Example
15. Video: You and Your Consulting and/or Support Team
16. Video: Focal Tool: The Customer Journey
17. Video: Nastia Root on Creating a Strong Interface with Support
18. Video: You and Your Sales and Marketing Team
19. Video: You and Your Finance/Accounting and Legal Teams
20. Video: You and Your Project Manager
21. Video: You and Your Management Team
22. Discussion Prompt: Issues interfacing with various teams?
23. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Many Areas, One Focus
24. Video: Week 1 Takeaways

Graded: Week 1 Final Quiz

WEEK 2


Using Today's Product Management Methods



You’ve probably heard that the days of ‘build it and they will come’ are over. But what exactly should you be doing instead? There’s no shortage of material out there on how to be innovative--but you only have so much time. This week we’ll step through the method’s today’s most successful product managers are using and give you tips to “sell” those methods to your stakeholders. We’ll also show you how to analyze growth, engagement and monetization using qualitative and quantitative methods. You’ll finish the week with an understanding of which methods to apply when and hear from practitioners who are using these methods to make breakthrough products.


20 videos, 3 practice quizzes expand

1. Video: Module intro: Ready for Week 2
2. Video: What Kind of PM Are You?
3. Video: Methods and PMs
4. Video: Agile and Product Management
5. Video: Design Thinking and the Product Manager
6. Video: Lean Startup and the Product Manager
7. Video: Managing Habits: Trigger and Action
8. Video: Managing Habits: Variable Reward and Investment
9. Video: Nir Eyal on Managing Habits
10. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Solving the Right Problem
11. Video: User Story Mapping for Product Managers
12. Video: Prototyping for Product Managers
13. Video: Usability Testing for Product Managers
14. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Creating the Right Solution
15. Video: Collaborating with Enterprise Customers--Tips 1-4
16. Video: Collaborating with Enterprise Customers--Tips 5-9
17. Video: David Bland on Avoiding the Product Death Cycle
18. Video: Shaping Your Funnel Part 1
19. Video: Shaping Your Funnel Part 2
20. Video: Managing a Product with Hardware
21. Video: Making Time to Do Things Right
22. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Applications in Product Management
23. Discussion Prompt: What did you learn from this week's guest speakers?
24. Video: Week 2 Takeaways

Graded: Week 2 Final Quiz

WEEK 3


Exploring a New Product Idea



Something on the order of 9 out of 10 new products fail. Those sound like daunting odds, but through disciplined exploration an effective PM knows how to make even the improbable probable. This week we’ll show you how to apply your understanding of modern PM methods to exploring new product ideas. We’ll step through customer discovery, idea testing/validation, early development, and business model design. By the end you’ll have a durable process you can both execute and communicate to your team.


13 videos, 3 practice quizzes expand

1. Video: Ready for Week 3?
2. Video: Learning vs. Scaling
3. Video: The Importance of Good Enough: "Cooped Up" MVPs
4. Video: The Importance of Good Enough: "Greener Air" MVPs
5. Video: Non-Titular Product Managers
6. Video: David Chait on Non-Titular PMs
7. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Learning vs. Scaling
8. Video: Horizons of Growth
9. Video: Corporate Innovation Pipeline
10. Video: Creating a Healthy Innovation Pipeline
11. Video: David Bland on New Ventures Inside the Corporation
12. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz on Innovating in the Corporation
13. Video: Business Model Design I: Proposition Design
14. Video: Business Model Design II: Customer Journeys
15. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz: From Proposition to Business Model
16. Video: Week 3 Takeaways

Graded: Week 3 Final Quiz: Exploring a New Product Idea

WEEK 4


Amplifying an Existing Product



If you want a product that does more than make a big splash, you’ll need to apply what you’ve learned here every week, every sprint to keep that product fresh and relevant. It’s not hard to let a great product get sidetracked and become irrelevant to its users--this happens all the time. Some figures show the portion of features on successful products that are regularly used to be well under 50%. Yikes! In this week, we’ll look at how successful product managers keep their products fresh and focused on valuable outcomes for their users. You’ll learn how to put a focused, sustainable, program in place to keep your product competitive.


19 videos, 2 practice quizzes expand

1. Video: Ready for Week 4?
2. Video: Identifying Business Model Types
3. Video: Business Model Design III: Delivery and Execution
4. Video: Tamara Carleton on Strategic Foresight
5. Video: The Trouble with New Features
6. Video: The Importance of Good Enough: Seedling Features
7. Video: Actionable Analytics
8. Video: Eric Qi Dong on Disciplined Analytics for the Product Manager
9. Video: Kiran Kadambi on Structuring Problems in Product Management
10. Video: Applying Data Science
11. Video: Andrew Kritzer on Data Science for the MBA
12. Video: Jim Rose on Continuous Integration and Delivery
13. Video: Jim Rose on Monolithic Architectures and Microservices
14. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz: Focused Tuning and Testing
15. Video: Managing a Channel or Modality
16. Video: Nastia Root on Being a Growth PM
17. Video: It's Not a Meeting l
18. Video: It's Not a Meeting II
19. Video: Roadmap?
20. Practice Quiz: Practice Quiz: Driving Growth through Focus
21. Video: Course and week close: Let's Not Make This Good-Bye

Graded: Week 4 Final Quiz