Software Product Leadership PM 101

Course details

Working as a Product Manager in tech, leading a software development initiative, and innovating new products all require a solid grasp of key business, technical, design and leadership skills. 

Increasingly entrepreneurs are turning to software to create breakthrough experiences and businesses are looking to differentiate their offerings with new services, apps, APIs and integrations. This course is designed to help you rapidly obtain a big picture understanding of software leadership, not just managing projects but how to direct and guide strategic decisions, determine requirements, design experiences and lead a team. You will learn the fundamental vocabulary and specific skills that can propel your career as a software leader.

What is a Product Manager's role in the software development lifecycle? How do Product Managers communicate requirements? How do they reduce ambiguity, frame the problem landscape, influence design decisions and drive execution? What are some common Product Metrics, what is A/B testing and why is it important for PMs to be data-driven? What do tech companies look for when they hire PMs? What are some good ways to prepare for PM interviews?

After this course, you will know everything you need to know to separate the fact from fiction about software product management and move forward as a software leader. Beyond the conceptual foundation and specific knowledge provided, the course also includes exercises, links and resources that will help you further your studies, help you with career decisions, and even to become a Product Manager yourself.

Syllabus Overview

Section 1: Introduction and Business Concepts

• Role of a Product Manager.
• An overview of business skills needed to run your products and features.
• A deep dive into performing competitive research.
• How to keep up with prevailing market trends and how to think about what features, apps or products to build next.

Section 2: Leadership and Teamwork

• How to create a pitch for your ideas.
• An overview of how to do estimation of time and resources needed when trying to get your idea funded.
• Understanding the dynamics and the culture of the team that you are in
• Best practices to avoid isolation and mis-alignment for yourself and others.
• Tips on socializing your ideas and seeking feedback on them from others in respectful and non-intrusive ways.

Section 3: User Experience (UX) Design

• Developing user stories and making use of personas to communicate product and feature ideas.
• Basics of visual design and working with designers to come up with alternatives (explorations) to bring the ideas to reality.
• Understanding the non-visual elements of design such as gestures, responsiveness, etc.
• An overview of common methods for performing user research, such as flash feedback, etc.
• What is A/B testing and how and why to A/B test different ideas.

Section 4: Execution and Evaluation (Data Driven-ness)

• Writing functional specifications.
• Unblocking Engineers by taking care of non-technical issues all the way from legal things such as open source licenses to UI strings that could block your team's progress.
• Understanding your role as the person who may be responsible for communication with partners.
• Role of Data - Understand common metrics such as Monthly Active Users, Daily Active Users, Net Promotor Score and so on - What are they about? How to use them to make product decisions!
• Special topic: A day in the life of a PM.

Section 5: Product Management interviews and Career advancement strategies

• Pro-tips from Ramit for preparing for your Product Management interview.
• References to books, blogs and materials you need to read to get started for your PM interview.
• A peek into career strategies that Dean applied to continuously grow his career for 20+ years.
• A framework for figuring out your career advancement as a PM