We often get asked what the best courses for product managers are and what product management courses aid in career development? Whether you are an entry-level product manager or a senior product manager, there are always more ways to improve product strategy and hone your product management skills. That’s why we put together our top 5 course recommendations for product professionals.
Responsive Product Portfolio Management
Course: Best outcome-driven product strategy course
Who is it for? Established product professionals
Price: $300, or free for RPPM Community and Dragonboat Customers
When: 1st Friday of every month (sign up to the RPPM Community)
Structure: 60-min course/15-min quiz | Remote | Online
Description: This quick and efficient online course is necessary for your growth in product management. In 60 minutes, you can become Level 1 certified and master the basics of Responsive Product Portfolio Management (“Responsive PPM”).
Responsive PPM is the framework outcome-driven organizations use to dynamically connect objectives, customer needs, and resources with execution. Responsive PPM helps product professionals accelerate outcomes responsive to the state of the organization as well as the market.
You’ll learn how to make the switch from traditional Project Portfolio Management, which focuses on a basket of projects and centralized governance, to Responsive PPM, which focuses on continuously evolving products. You will also learn how to apply Responsive PPM to your day-to-day, allowing portfolio leaders to adapt and adjust in real-time to best deliver customer delight and business outcomes.
Benefits/What you will learn:
- An introduction to Responsive Product Portfolio Management.
- The 5 pillars of Responsive PPM – multidimensional portfolio management, 3 operating horizons, double diamond strategy, MoAR prioritization, responsive allocation.
- The difference between traditional product management and Responsive Product Portfolio Management.
- How to effectively apply Responsive PPM to your organization.
- Earn membership to the Responsive PPM, outcome-driven community.
- Earn your Responsive PPM credentials you can add to your LinkedIn and resume.
Instructor: Becky Flint is the CEO and founder of Dragonboat, a SaaS company with the mission of empowering outcome-driven product teams with a modern PPM tool. Becky scaled product operations and built a responsive product portfolio framework for a number of tech companies like PayPal, BigCommerce, Shutterfly, and Feedzai prior to starting Dragonboat to solve the challenges she experienced firsthand at scale.
As a product leader, she has built and grown an outcome-focused community around product operations and responsive PPM and has also attracted thousands of active and engaged product leaders.
As a thought leader in tech leadership and product portfolio management, she is a frequent public speaker and mentors through prestigious platforms such as Insight Partners, Product School, Pearson, Plato, and Stanford.
Produx Labs Product Operations 101 Workshop
Course: Best Introduction to Product Operations course
Who is it for? Those looking to break into Product Operations or bring the function to their company.
Price: $495
When: Monthly, see upcoming schedule
Structure: 9:00am ET – 1:00pm ET | Remote | Online | Max of 20 attendees
Description: Product Operations enable outcome-oriented decision-making at scale. This function surrounds the product and development teams so they have the support needed to make the best decisions. This high-level course is for those looking to break into Product Operations, as well as those looking to introduce Product Operations to their company. In addition to taking you through getting started, the course answers questions like “how do you know your product strategy is working? How do your product teams get the data they need to set success metrics or know if they are on the right path?”
The course focuses on the three major areas of Product Operations: Data and Insights, Customer Feedback and Market Research, and Processes and Governance. If you’re interested in learning more about product operations, this is the workshop for you.
Benefits/What you will learn:
- An introduction to Product Operations as well as why it’s essential for scale-up companies.
- An overview of the three pillars of Product Operations and how they contribute to informing outcome-oriented product strategies.
- Implementing Product Operations at your company – best practices as well as potential watch-outs.
- Most commonly used tools and techniques.
- The roles on Product Operations teams and how to hire well (or redeploy current staffers).
Instructor: Denise Tilles has 10+ years of product experience working with growth stage and enterprise organizations. Her expertise also includes product strategy in SaaS businesses, pricing/packaging, org design, and P&L management.
She previously created the product strategy and built the product team at Understood and led product management at Cision, a B2B enterprise SaaS company. Denise is also a mentor at Built by Girls, supporting young women to explore tech career possibilities and build their first network.
Product Maestro – Storytelling for Product Leaders
Course: Best Product Storytelling course
Who is it for? Product professionals and general leaders who want to increase their influence
Price: 6-week course ($995) or self-study option ($550)
When: Cohorts 2x per year (see upcoming schedule) / or anytime with self-study
Structure: 6-weeks of video lectures with 1 live session/week | Remote | Online
Description: This course is designed for those in a product whose success hinges on effectively working with people. Have you ever done all the research, walked into a meeting with all the facts, but still failed to get your executives on board? It’s likely the product storytelling that missed the mark.
Product Maestro’s storytelling course teaches you how to influence like never before. The course breaks down the different personalities that you’re pitching to, so you can bring every executive on board.
This program will not only teach you how to get execs on board with your vision, but also how to get customer buy-in. It will also teach you how to manage every high-stakes interaction, and use storytelling methodology to get your point across with crystal clarity. Learn how to better convey your message in both your personal and professional life.
Interested? Take this quiz to see what storyteller type you are.
Benefits/What you will learn:
- An introduction to storytelling- the structure of a great story and the basic techniques to effective storytelling.
- How to leverage your newfound storytelling basics so you can be more influential in the workplace.
- How to craft stories like Hollywood – capture attention with your stories and remain engaging in any environment.
- Everyone is a different storyteller type, learn how to best utilize yours and adapt to other people’s storyteller type.
- Learn how to best express yourself in any medium whether it be Zoom, powerpoint, on stage, or in a simple meeting.
Instructor: In her 15 years spanning enterprise and consumer, SaaS, health, energy, and semiconductor, Connie Kwan has crafted and delivered thousands of stories in her roles as Chief Product Officer and CEO. Whether it’s presenting to executives, motivating teams, or convincing candidates to join a company, storytelling is at the heart of her work.
Her storytelling experience engaging different audiences through powerful narratives has consequently led to talking on countless public stages. She has told stories at Google Tech Talk, Health 2.0, Keynote for eCornell, Product Management Festival, and Atlassian’s annual conference. Additionally, she has been on panels for Women in Product and Product Pub and was interviewed for a podcast for Practical Product. Her passions led her to collaborate with actor and theatre director Max Koknar to create the Storyteller Method to turn the art of storytelling into a science. This is the method she continues to teach in her class.
Product School Product Management Courses
Course: Best general product management skills course
Who is it for? For product professionals looking to make a change in their career
Price: 1 certificate ($4,499) or 3 certificates ($13,499)
When: Courses start every month (sign up at Product School)
Structure: Choose full-time courses (5-days) or part-time courses (2-months on weeknights or weekends) | Remote | Online | 20 students/class
Description: Product School is the global leader in Product Management training with a community of over one million product professionals. Their certificates are industry-recognized credentials by employers hiring product managers. Furthermore, you can choose the certificate that fits your career goals.
Their certificates include:
- Entry- The product manager certificate helps you land your first product management job.
- Professional – The product leader certificate helps you move up the product management ladder.
- Executive – The product executive certificate is the first step to joining the c-suite.
Benefits/What you will learn:
- The Product School’s certificate program is highly relevant for the next generation of software product leaders.
- Product School is flexible so you can choose the course that lines up best with your schedule.
- Get taught by real accredited product professionals for a fraction of the cost of a traditional MBA.
- Upon course completion, you’ll receive industry-recognized certifications you can add to your LinkedIn and resume.
- You’ll also earn access into their Product School community and slack with 100,000+ product professionals.
Instructor: All Product School instructors are real-world Product Leaders working at top Silicon Valley companies like Google, Facebook, Netflix, Airbnb, PayPal, Uber, and Amazon.
Product Management Certification Course
Course: Best Introduction to Product Management Course
Who is it for? Those looking to break into Product Management or who want a return to the fundamentals.
Price: $350
When: You choose (sign up at Product Manager HQ)
Structure: Self-paced 7-day online course | Remote | Online
Description: The Product Management Certification Course will arm you with real-world skills you need to know about product management from learning the essential fundamentals of product management, creating your own product management project, to dominating your product management interviews.
This course is also great for those who have been struggling to find their footing in their role or who are looking to land a great product management role.
Benefits/What you will learn:
- Learn about the day-in-the-life of a product management – the ideal skill-sets to develop, the process of working with cross-functional teams, the product lifecycle and development cycle, popular development methodologies, and product ideation.
- How to structure and conduct proper user research and user interviews.
- Key fundamentals of landing a product management job and how to stand out as a candidate.
- How to apply product management fundamentals into your own projects.
- Access to PMHQ Product Management community with over 10k+ professionals.
Instructor: Dhaval Bhatt is a Product Management Leader who has spent 16 years as an engineer, founder, and product management leader. He previously founded an artificial intelligence company that won the IBM Global Entrepreneur Award, Google Spark Award, NVIDIA AI Inception Award, Strata-Hadoop Featured Data Startup, and Orielly Intel Featured AI startup. Furthermore, he was a Senior Product Owner for Data Analytics and Growth / Acquisition at Lifelock and is currently a Product Management Leader for Artificial Intelligence at Wells Fargo. He’s also an Instructor at UC Berkeley leading their immersive Data Science program.
