Product Manager Nanodegree Program

The most effective products start with a comprehensive market-based, insight-driven strategy. Understand the role that product managers play during product development, with a focus on activities that happen early in the product development cycle. Learn how to identify the right problems to solve through market research, target user definition, and market sizing. Create a compelling vision and strategy that will set up the team to solve those problems. Understand how to communicate effectively to get people excited and bought into your ideas. 

This lesson is an introduction to Product Management-- what it is, why it matters, and a brief history. 

This lesson covers the role and responsibilities of a PM. The lesson will also cover other functions that PMs frequently interact with, as well as artifacts that PMs create align the team on what to build and what the product needs to do. 

This lesson covers how to make sure that you are solving the right problems by understanding the market, the user, and business goals to identify opportunities. There really is no shortage of problems that could be solved-- but one of the hardest things to do is decide what not to solve. 

This lesson covers Vision & Strategy for Product Development. We’ll also discuss how to map out your business model and different options for capturing revenue. Additionally, we’ll also talk about how to measure your progress through KPIs 

This lesson covers Communication Skills for Product Managers, including: listening, storytelling, persuasion, presentations, and negotiation. 

Pitch a Product Vision Any product that gets built starts with a vision and a product manager who rallies stakeholders behind that vision. In this project, you will develop a compelling pitch for a new product.

Once the problem has been defined and a market opportunity has been identified, it is important to create a solution that is desirable by its users. Bring an idea through concept, design, and user validation, as well as creating a spec to hand-off to engineering for development. Use design thinking methodologies to diverge in order to explore ideas, and then ultimately focus in and converge on a single idea. Map out the full concept through the creation of a prototype that can be used to validate that you’re solving a problem for real users. 

This lesson is an overview of the Design Sprint process, identifying the right problems to bring into a Design Sprint, and how to work effectively with Designers. 

This lesson covers the first phase of the Design Sprint -- Understanding. You'll get an overview of this phase, and learn several methods to increase understanding 

This lesson covers the second phase of the Design Sprint -- Define. You'll get an overview of this phase and learn methods to create focus and define outcomes. 

This lesson covers the third phase of the Design Sprint -- Sketching. You'll get an overview of this phase and then you'll learn how to sketch, brainstorm and pick ideas to sketch out in more detail. 

This lesson covers the fourth phase of the Design Sprint -- Deciding. We'll get an overview of this phase and learn methods to narrow down and converge on one idea. 

This lesson covers the fifth phase of the Design Sprint -- Prototyping. You'll get an overview of this phase, learn more about the different methods of prototyping, as well learn best practices 

This lesson covers the sixth phase of the Design Sprint -- Validating. You'll get an overview of this phase and learn how to validate your concept from both a user and a feasibility perspective. 

You’ve made it through all the phases of the Design Sprint. This lesson will focus on how to bring it all together and what will happen next 

For this course, you will be running a Design Sprint to further develop a concept to address an opportunity that you have identified.

A product is only successful if it can be feasibility built according to a dedicated timeline. Learn the critical soft skills needed to manage the development and execution phase of the product. Collaborate with cross-functional teams and business stakeholders to guide the product development team through planning and execution. Manage stakeholder expectations and handle risks that arise, reprioritizing feature and sprint priorities to tackle competing requests. 

Once a need has been defined, and a product has been designed and developed, it is time to bring that product to the market. Learn all about the launch process and the important partners a Product Manager will need to work with during this phase. Create a plan, identify the launch risks and figure out how to minimize their impact on your launch. Collaborate with Marketing stakeholders to determine how to target your customers and develop a compelling message to increase engagement in your product. Work with Sales, Customer Support, and the other teams to prepare them to interface with your customers as the product is launched. Execute the launch and use feedback from your customers to determine the next steps for your product. Project: Project: Deliver a Product to Market Complete 

This lesson is an introduction to Product Launch -- what it is, why it matters, and a brief history. 

This lesson covers how to set up a launch process. We'll also discuss how to scale a product and finish by looking into how we can identify the risks in our launch plans and what we can do to mitigate them.  

In this lesson, we will discuss how Product Managers and the Marketing team work together. We'll also talk about the go-to-market strategy, understanding the competition, acquisition channel strategy and pricing strategy. 

We are getting closer to the launch date! Now we need to bring in the teams that work more closely with our customers and users. 

This lesson covers launch day, post-launch feedback, and how to use feedback and metrics from the launch to set the next steps for the product 

For this project, you will simulate a product launch. You will develop a go-to-market strategy, outline a launch plan, identify potential problems and define the next iteration of the product.