Product Management Fundamentals & Frameworks

Businesses need to build and deliver value on a continuous basis. Agility allows the business to constantly adapt and align. The Product framework helps enterprises determine what they should focus on and why. Understanding core concepts and using industry standard frameworks eases the transition to a product mindset and reduces the adoption curve materially.

Learn More

What You Will Learn

  • Core Product Management concepts
  • Understanding and adopting the Product Mindset
  • Key product roles and responsibilities
  • Value Stream Mapping in the context of Lean Management
  • Product Life Cycle
  • Industry standard product frameworks

About This Short Course

Product Management principles and practices evolved in the consumer goods industry over the years. When ported over to the tech industry, it created highly successful and global IT giants like IBM, HP and Microsoft, a few decades ago. Today, these principles are applied universally in building tech hardware and software products, from Big-Tech to Start-ups, as well as the Federal, State & Local Governments.

The use of Product Management has accelerated of late due to the recognition that it is arguably the most effective set of principles and frameworks that maximizes value creation for businesses, agencies and the consumers. It does so consistently by enabling continuous prioritization at all levels of the organization, with an emphasis on outside-in perspective. This powerful mindset shift transforms organizational cultures, structures and working patterns in a way that enables continuous competitiveness in the marketplace.

In this course, you will learn core concepts, industry standard frameworks and learn from your cohort’s collective experiences. In addition to the synchronous and asynchronous learning, you will build hands-on Product Management skills by developing product deliverables each week and in turn, building out a MVP for a product of your choice in a team setting. The cumulative experience may enable you to deliver better success in your current products and projects as well as pave the way to transition into a Product Management career of your choosing.

At A Glance

  • Schedule 6 Sessions, 1 Per Week. Asynchronous pre-class learning of up to 4 hours per week. Synchronous class time commitment of 2 hours per week. Asynchronous project work of up to 2 hours per week.
  • Learning Review pre-class videos and articles at your own pace. Discuss concepts, share experiences, gather insights. Personally connect with instructor and other students once a week
  • Build Your Product Apply your knowledge and skills by developing your product with your team asynchronously. Learn from collective experiences, receive expert feedback
  • Career coaching session A dedicated group coaching session for current and aspiring Product Managers at the end of the 6-week class
  • Earn a UMD Completion Certificate plus 36 PDUs Support from staff and faculty, recognized by PMI
Your Instructor

Tushar Rathod

I love addressing highly complex challenges currently facing the leadership ranks in corporates, academia, government and non-profits. I help large organizations scale product mindset through IT modernization, product-centric approach, composable architecture & enterprise agility.

Syllabus

Week 1
Week 1
  • What is a Product? Understand the Product mindset.
  • The difference between Product Management & Agile Project Management
  • Shape the product’s Vision
  • Conceptualize high-level product details using the Lean Canvas
  • Understand product roles & responsibilities

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Product Vision Statement 2) Product Lean Canvas

Week 2
Week 2
  • Understanding and shaping a Product’s Core Value Proposition
  • Market, Customer, Competitive Research
  • Persona Development

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Research Brief 2) Opportunity Hypothesis 3) Persona

Week 3
Week 3
  • Shaping solutions using the Google Ventures Design Sprints
  • Problem Definition
  • Potential Solutions
  • Verifiable Product Hypothesis
  • Testable Product Prototype

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Build a Product Prototype

Week 4
Week 4
  • Customer Development using the prototype
  • Internal validation
  • Customer feedback
  • Shaping the Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Define your Product’s MVP (with justification)

Week 5
Week 5
  • Shape the end-to-end Customer Journey
  • Identify pain points, opportunities and needs
  • Define the experience

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Customer Journey Map

Week 6
Week 6
  • Build a comprehensive Product Roadmap
  • Roadmap purpose, types, usage
  • Feature Prioritization
  • MoSCoW Framework

Product Assignment: Build the following deliverables using templates provided - 1) Deliverables Roadmap 2) Value Roadmap