Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job
 | 12h 55min total length |
 | 18 sections |
| 144 lectures |
Course Overview
Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job
Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job course provides the skills that make up the entire Product Management job and process: from ideation to market research, to UX wireframing to prototyping, technology, metrics, and finally to building the product with user stories, project management, scoping, and leadership.
What you’ll learn:
- Understand the varying role of a Product Manager through different types and sizes of companies
- Decide which type of Product Manager best fits one’s goals and personality
- Understand the Product Lifecycle and how it applies to every product
- Understand the modern Product Development Process that both Fortune 500s and Startups adhere to
- Know how to identify ideas worth pursuing and dedicating resources to
- Understand how to get at the root of customer pain points
- Understand and communicate customer pain by type and frequency
- Assess the core problem of a product
- Find and compare competitors and competing products
- Differentiate between Direct, Indirect, Substitute, and Potential competitors
- Understand the process of Customer Development and how it relates to being a Product Manager
- How to find potential interviewees for product interviews, user tests, and exploratory interviews
- How to structure and run a customer interview
- How to model interview questions correctly while avoiding bias
- Navigate the four different types of customer interviews
- Find potential interviewees both internally and externally
- Write emails that will get users and potential customers to respond
- Build user personas based on both qualitative and quantitative data
- Understand the difference between a wireframe, a mockup, and a prototype
- Sketch out a wireframe with just a pen and paper
- Use Balsamiq to create wireframes at an intermediate level
- Use a sketch system called POP for digitizing product sketches
- Create specs for epics and user stories
- Properly apply acceptance criteria
- Run a variety of MVP experiments, such as pitch experiments, redirects, shadow buttons, and more
- Correctly evaluate which product metrics to track and which to ignore
- Apply the AARRR framework to your product
- Apply the HEART framework to your product
- Track your metrics using a variety of software
- Create a product and feature roadmap
- Create a product backlog and properly prioritize features
- Calculate team velocity and build estimations for product delivery
- Understand the difference between Agile and Waterfall development
- Understand the difference between two popular Agile frames: Scrum and Kanban
- Learn software development concepts like APIs, mobile development, Front End, Back End, MySQL, programming frameworks, and more
- Communicate effectively with all the stakeholders of a product
- Communicate effectively with engineers in a way they will appreciate and understand
- Communicate effectively with designers by focusing on the things they care about most
- Communicate effectively with executives and higher-ups
- Understand the role of technology in modern Startups and Fortune 500s
- Understand the basics of “The Cloud” and Servers vs. Clients
- Understand the basics of front-end vs. back-end technology, tech stacks, and how they integrate together
- Understand the basics of APIs, what they do, what they look like, and how your team might use them
- Understand how to obtain relevant experience to set up for a transition to Product Management
- Build a portfolio that will assist in a hiring application
- How to self-brand online and build a following pre-hire
- What to look for in Product Management jobs and what to ignore
- How to apply insider tips and tricks to getting hired as a Product Manager
- Craft a resume that appeals to a hiring manager for Product Management placement
- Ace the Product Manager interview
- Excel beyond getting hired
Course Title
Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job
This course includes:
- 13 hours on-demand video
- 25 articles
- 120 downloadable resources
- Access on mobile and TV
- Full lifetime access
- Closed captions
- Certificate of completion
Requirements
- No pre-requisites, although familiarity with basic business concepts is helpful
Who this course is for:
- Anyone looking to get a job in Product Management
- Anyone wanting to transition into Product Management
- Already established Product Managers who want to advance their skillset
- Entrepreneurs looking to master the product development process
Course content
18 sections • 144 lectures • 12h 55m total length
1. Before Starting the Course – 5 lectures 7min
| Course Overview Preview | 05:06 |
| First Thing to Do Preview | 01:24 |
| Choose your own adventure – we’ll tell you which lectures to watch *SAVE TIME!* | 0:33 |
| Join our community on Slack! | Processing.. |
| Review sheets, activities, & resources – all in one PDF! | 0:17 |
2. Introduction to Product Development – 11 lectures 32min
| What is a Product Manager? Preview | 2:54 |
| What is a Product? | 2:54 |
| [POP QUIZ] Products and Product Managers | 5 questions |
| [ACTIVITY] The Big, Bloated, Blue Bird | 1:32 |
| Three Different Types of Product Manager Roles | 4:30 |
| How to Think About the Type of PM You Want to Be | 4:01 |
| Product vs. Project Management | 6:41 |
| A Day in the Life | 4:48 |
| Why Product Management is Awesome | 1:46 |
| [QUIZ] The World of Product Management | 3 questions |
| Hooray for free stuff! | 1:40 |
| Q&A Section 2: SQL, Service Businesses, and All About Being a PM | 0:53 |
| Section 2: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
3. Introduction to Product Management – 12 lectures 32min
| The Four Major Phases of the Product Lifecycle | 3:14 |
| [POP QUIZ] Did You Catch All of That? | 2 questions |
| [ACTIVITY] Six Products Four Phases – Can you guess which? | 0:21 |
| Product Lifecycle Phases: Real World Examples | 4:06 |
| The Product Development Process | 3:22 |
| Getting Deeper Into the Product Development Process | 4:40 |
| [ANOTHER POP QUIZ] Product Lifecycle and Development Quiz | 3 questions |
| What is “Lean Product Development”? | 1:56 |
| What is “Agile”? | 1:37 |
| What is “Scrum” and How Does it Work? | 4:17 |
| What is “Kanban” and How Does it Work? | 2:50 |
| What is Waterfall Development? | 1:12 |
| Real World Examples of Waterfall and Agile | 4:26 |
| [QUIZ] Speaking “Product Development” | 7 questions |
| Section 3: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
4. Ideas and User Needs – 6 lectures 17min
| Introduction to Ideas and User Needs | 2:01 |
| Where Ideas Come From as a PM | 4:53 |
| [POP QUIZ] On the Origin of Ideas | 6 questions |
| Getting to the Real User Needs | 7:58 |
| [ACTIVITY]: Separating the Signal from the Noise | 0:26 |
| Users vs. Customers | 1:41 |
| [QUIZ] Ideas and User Needs | 4 questions |
| Section 4: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
5. Competitive and Market Analysis – 15 lectures 1hr 19min
| Market Research – Sizing the Market Preview | 4:09 |
| Introduction to Finding Competitors | 3:04 |
| Finding Competitors as a Product Manager | 12:18 |
| Direct / Indirect / Potential Competitors and Their Impact | 7:30 |
| [POP QUIZ] One Company to Rule Them All | 5 questions |
| The Five Criteria for Understanding Competitors | 6:03 |
| The Last Three Criteria for Understanding Competitors | 5:26 |
| [POP QUIZ] The Dating Game | 7 questions |
| What’s a Feature Table? | 2:03 |
| Putting Together a Feature Table | 6:03 |
| [ACTIVITY] Oculus Rift Between Your Friends | Processing.. |
| Practice Building a Feature Table | 8:30 |
| Analyze Specific Features | 11:42 |
| [ACTIVITY] Wunderlist and Their Not-So-Wunderful Dilemma | Processing.. |
| Monitoring Competitors | 10:51 |
| What Do We Ultimately Care About as a PM? | 1:33 |
| Section 5: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
6. Customer Development – 15 lectures 1hr 34min
| What is Customer Development? | 6:11 |
| The Four Types of Interviews | 10:22 |
| Key Differences in Customer Development | 2:36 |
| [POP QUIZ] Customer Development | 8 questions |
| Who You Should Talk To | 10:00 |
| Finding Interviewees Externally | 11:26 |
| Finding Interviewees Internally | 9:22 |
| How to Get Them to Talk | 9:36 |
| Practice Writing Emails | 9:14 |
| How to Run a Customer Interview Correctly | 8:22 |
| Putting the GO in Pokemon Go | 0:00 |
| Good Questions, Bad Questions | 7:10 |
| Building User Personas Off Your Interviews | 3:28 |
| Real World Example of a User Persona | 1:48 |
| The Product Manager & The Data Diet | 4:29 |
| [QUIZ] Understanding Customer Development | 3 questions |
| Section 6: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
7. Designing and Running Experiments – 25 lectures 2hr 18min
| What is an MVP? | 6:37 |
| How do product managers think about MVPs? | 6:59 |
| 7 steps to running an MVP experiment | 4:11 |
| [POP QUIZ] You Down with MVP? | 5 questions |
| Identifying your assumptions | 7:17 |
| FOLLOW ALONG: Let’s identify the assumptions for Zirx | 7:05 |
| Finding the riskiest assumption of them all | 5:56 |
| Making decisions: The risk / difficulty square | 5:57 |
| What is a hypothesis? | 3:45 |
| Putting together a hypothesis | 7:56 |
| FOLLOW ALONG: Identifying Zirx’s hypothesis | 4:14 |
| What’s a minimum criteria for success? | 8:28 |
| Creating a formula for your MCS | 8:18 |
| OPTIONAL: Making the calculation for startups | 3:18 |
| MVP techniques: emails, shadows, & whoops | 8:39 |
| More MVP techniques: walk me throughs & pitch experiments | 7:29 |
| Even more MVP techniques: bellhops, Dorothy, & Frankensteins | 6:57 |
| In depth: Email based MVPs | 3:27 |
| In depth: Shadow buttons | 2:31 |
| In depth: Coming soon & 404 MVPs | 3:42 |
| In depth: Explainer videos | 5:22 |
| In depth: Piecemeal MVPs | 4:42 |
| In depth: Concierge service MVPs | 4:20 |
| OPTIONAL: How do big companies think about MVP experiments? | 5:08 |
| Evaluating results & Learning from them | 5:19 |
| Section 7: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
8. Conceptualizing the solution – 8 lectures 1hr 2min
| Introduction to Wireframing | 5:36 |
| Wireframe, Mockup, Prototype | 11:02 |
| Let’s Jump into Sketching | 9:01 |
| Sketching Out a Mobile App | 7:30 |
| OPTIONAL: Using POP features in Marvel | 8:57 |
| Intro to Balsamiq | 11:07 |
| Building YouTube in Balsamiq | 8:27 |
| [QUIZ] Just Making Sure… | 7 questions |
| Section 8: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
9. Metrics for Product Managers – Defining Success and Measuring Results – 9 lectures 1hr 16min
| Introduction to Metrics | 7:31 |
| Real Life Examples of Metrics | 7:53 |
| Metrics of All Kinds | 15:08 |
| How to Pick Good Metrics | 11:57 |
| Using the HEART Metrics Framework – Part 1 | 10:04 |
| Using the HEART Metrics Framework – Part 2 | 11:46 |
| Using the AARRR (Pirate) Metrics Framework | 6:40 |
| Tracking Your Metrics in Practice | 5:16 |
| [QUIZ] Pirates of the Correlation | 8 questions |
| Section 9: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
10. Building the Product – Project Management for PMs
| Introduction to Epics | 5:15 |
| Let’s Get Into Epic Specs | 4:49 |
| User Stories and Acceptance Criteria | 4:33 |
| Real Life Example of Epics, Specs, User Stories, and the Backlog | 12:07 |
| Estimations and Velocity | 9:24 |
| Roadmapping | 5:40 |
| Prioritization | 7:20 |
| [QUIZ] Epic Feature, Bro | 7 questions |
| Section 10: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
11. Working with People and Stakeholders – 5 lectures 14min
| General Communication Skills | 2:40 |
| Working with Engineers | 4:22 |
| Working with Designers | 3:42 |
| Working with Executives and Others | 3:42 |
| [QUIZ] How to Win Friends and Influence Products | 6 questions |
| Section 11: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
12. Technology for Product Managers – 6 lectures 28min
| Why Learn Technology? | 3:04 |
| “The Cloud”, Servers, Clients, and the Inner Workings of the Internet | 5:29 |
| Understanding the Front End, Back End, and Tech Stacks | 8:20 |
| Understanding APIs – Application Programming Interfaces | 5:09 |
| Additional Technology | 5:52 |
| [QUIZ] Turn it, leave it, start format it…technologic. | 4 questions |
| Section 12: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
13. What you should do to prepare yourself for the job – 4 lectures 11min
| Getting Relevant Experience | 4:52 |
| Building a Portfolio with a Side Project | 2:56 |
| Branding Yourself | 3:05 |
| [QUIZ] Prep Yourself | 3 questions |
| Section 13: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
14. How to Look for a Job in Product Management – 3 lectures 6min
| Where to Look and What to Look For | 3:33 |
| Inside Advice on Your PM Job Hunt | 2:27 |
| [QUIZ] Dreams Don’t Work Unless You Do | 3 questions |
| Section 14: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
15. How to Get the Job in Product Management – 5 lectures 21min
| Resumes | 4:08 |
| Interviewing for Product Management | 4:00 |
| How to Answer Interview Questions the Right Way | 4:53 |
| Insider Tips for Getting the Job | 8:16 |
| [QUIZ] Be Like Cole | 4 questions |
| Section 15: Review & Recap | 0:00 |
16. After You’ve got the Job – 2 lectures 9min
| The First Things to Do | 5:49 |
| End of Course | 2:56 |
17. Extended Interviews with Current Product Managers – 4 lectures 1hr 40min
| Interview with Daniel Demetri, Product Lead @ Earnest, Ex-PM @ Google | 3:31 |
| Interview with David Lifson, VP of Product @ Homepolish | 20:00 |
| Q&A Section 2 (part 1): Introduction to Product Management | 4:12 |
| Q&A Section 2 (part 2): Introduction to Product Management | 0:04 |
18. Bonus Section – 1 lecture 1min.
| Bonus Lecture | 0:17 |
Instructor: Cole Mercer
Hey there! I’m Cole, and I’m happy to be a Udemy Instructor Partner with over 250,000 students worldwide. I found my love for teaching in 2015 and have courses across Udemy and LinkedIn Learning where I am lucky enough to be rated a top instructor on both platforms.
I’m currently a product management, strategy, and artificial intelligence consultant with my own business helping clients that have as many as 5,000 employees.
Before that, I was a VP at Semrush holding the position of Head of Product for the Academy division – the company was a public one with over 1000 employees.
Prior to that, I was a Senior Product Manager at SoundCloud where I worked on listener experience for over 170 million monthly users across web, iOS, and Android platforms.
I’m also a former General Assembly Product Management instructor where I taught courses in person to students in Manhattan. I’m on Udemy now because I loved my experience at GA and really enjoy teaching others about things I’ve learned.
I have consulted for various tech companies, and while in NYC was also a Product Manager at Bonobos – a web-focused retail clothing brand where I oversaw web and mobile properties that generated tens of millions in annual revenue through tens of thousands of customers.
Included in my knowledge is a lot of enterprise and a SaaS product management experience – I was an early product manager at Mass Relevance, a social API and data-focused enterprise marketing platform which was acquired in 2014.
Much earlier in my career I spent over a year as a PM with an investor funded startup in Austin, TX focusing on driving traction for early stage companies where we had over 35,000 users. I moved to that position from an initial role as a web engineer.
My career in Product Management started after graduating from Babson College and becoming a technology consultant to several companies across the US for over 2 years. As a result, I am fortunate enough to have experience in product management that spans several industries and development models.
Instructor: Evan Kimbrell
Hi, I’m Evan Kimbrell. Thanks for checking out my course.
**My courses have been featured in Forbes, CNN, Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessInsider, BuzzFeed, Mashable, TheNextWeb, The Daily Beast, & Techcrunch**
Currently, I’m the Founder and Director of Sprintkick, a full-service, referral-only digital agency based out of San Francisco. Over the past four years I’ve overseen the development and launch of over 100 web and mobile apps. Clients range from two-man bootstrapping startups to multibillion dollar Fortune 100s like Wal-Mart, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and GNC.
Prior to Sprintkick I worked as a VC for a new firm called Juvo Capital, based out of L.A. I spearheaded the firm’s expansion into Silicon Valley and into the Consumer Web tech category.
In the long long ago, I was a co-founder for an educational software startup called ScholarPRO that raised a ton of money and then spectacularly blew up (in the bad way). Before it exploded like the Death Star, I went through five tech incubators (yes, five): Tech Stars, Excelerate Labs, MassChallenge, Babson Venture Program, and Sparkseed.
Hope you enjoy my courses!
Course Feature
Course Feature
Course Provider: Udemy
UEN: N/A
Course Reference Number: N/A
Mode Of Training: Online
| FULL COURSE FEE | $119.98 |
|---|---|
| Duration | 12h 55min |
Available in: English
