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J H edited this page Apr 17, 2019 · 150 revisions

Syllabus

Session 1: Product + Management (The Phantom Product)

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn the basics of end-to-end product management and begin to develop their Startup Studio product strategies.

Lecture (slides):

  • Preview of the entire course
  • Introduction to product management
    • Six phases of a big project (and how to counter)
    • 4 D’s of PM
    • What is a PM? (hint: it’s not a Project Manager: line vs dot)
    • The Product part vs the Management part
    • What does a PM do and not do
    • Heads up vs heads down
  • Directionality
    • Illustration that this is not a linear process
    • @goldman’s fog metaphor
    • Xeno’s paradox
  • Developing a meaningful and impactful product strategy
    • Review basic product strategy
      • Narrative
      • System Diagram
      • Wedges
      • NCP
    • Modeling for high impact
      • Why high impact is where startups live
      • Audience
        • 1/9/90 rule
        • How it changes as your startup changes
        • Early Adopters
      • Applying to your basic strategy

Readings:

Homework (worksheet):

  • Create an Audience Map of your project (from BigCo or Startup)
  • Hold a Audience Workshop with your team
    • Create a second Audience Map with your team
  • Create your Narrative
  • Create the initial version of your System Mind Map & Wedge
  • Define a Market Size & Initial Audience

Session 2: Product + Design (Revenge of the Users)

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn the key points where product management and design intersect, understanding the right questions to ask product designers

Lecture (slides):

  • A PM’s approach to design
    • Completeness: What are the loops?
    • Focus: Where is the call to action?
    • Simplicity: The best design is no design
    • Scalability: How to leverage design frameworks and style guides
    • Flexibility: Leaving space for variation and iteration
    • Speed: Why speed and responsiveness matters
  • A PM’s relationship with designers
    • Understanding your skills and your designer's skills
      • Differentiation between: Interaction Design, Visual Design, Graphic Design, Illustration
      • What to leverage, how, and when
    • Arming your designers with knowledge early on (and not arming them with your opinions after execution)
      • The risk of placing design in a waterfall
    • How to provide feedback
      • Criticism vs feedback
      • Facts vs opinions
      • Creating a problem to solve vs dictating opinions

Readings:

Homework:

  • Take your project (BigCo or Startup)
    • Draw your Product Loop
    • Revise your Goals/Features sheet
  • Read the readings for the next class

Session 3: Product + Data (Attack of the Data)

Learning Objectives:

  • Students learn how to effectively leverage data during the product development process

Lecture (slides):

  • Raw data & measurement
    • Types of Data available and how to leverage them
  • Inferring causal relationships
    • Segments, Cohorts
  • Improving, optimizing, and socializing
    • Experiments, Funnels, Dashboards

Readings:

Homework:

  • Take your project (BigCo or Startup)
    • Build your Data Dashboard Worksheet
    • Draw your dashboard
  • Read the readings for the next class

Session 4: Product + Development Part I (A New Product)

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn the building blocks about how product development teams come together to build products

Lecture (slides):

  • Establishing product goals
    • Identifying features for each goal
    • Categorizing features to establish a prioritization
  • Development processes and methodologies
    • Why we need them
    • How we got here, from waterfall to agile
    • How to evaluate development methodologies

Readings:

Homework:

  • Complete the features on your goal sheets
  • Map out features into the prioritization framework
  • Then revisit your goal sheets to prioritize your features

Session 5: Product + Development II (The Code Strikes Back)

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn how to create a product roadmap, why roadmaps are necessary, how product teams work, and how to conduct a retrospective.

Lecture (slides):

  • Roadmaps to Stories
    • What is a roadmap
    • The elements of a roadmap
    • Why does a roadmap exist?
    • How can a roadmap go wrong?
  • Teams
    • Who is on a product or development team?
    • How are teams structured?
    • How do you scale beyond one team?
  • Stories
    • What is a story?
    • How are they used?
    • How do they relate to epics and the roadmap?
  • Retrospectives
    • What is a retrospective?
    • Why do teams need them?

Homework:

  • Revisit your prioritization sheets to create a roadmap covering your work for the rest of the semester.
    • Based on the worksheet on slide 26 in the lecture slides.
  • Conduct a Retrospective with your team about Sprint 2.
    • Use a whiteboard. Take a picture and submit it.
    • Make sure to include action items.
    • Use one of these three formats.
      • Start / Stop / Continue
      • Mad / Sad / Glad
      • The Four L's
    • N.B.: Retrospectives are safe spaces for your teams, so we will not share this homework in class.
  • Read the readings for the next class

Session 6: Product + Development III (Return of the Product Manager)

Learning Objectives:

  • Students learn how to assess and improve product quality and increase speed of execution in their team

Lecture (slides):

  • Retrospective Retrospective
    • A discussion on how our retrospectives went
  • Kanban
    • Some history
    • Creating flow in your development team
  • Breaking down stories
  • Bugs, Maintenance, and Technical Debt
  • Pre-Mortems

Readings:

Homework:

  • Complete your pre-mortem (with your team)

Session 7: Product + The World (The Product Manager Awakens)

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn how product managers can effectively incorporate additional sources of requirements, including security, privacy, legal, regulatory compliance, and ethics.

Readings:

Session 8: Product + Product Managers (The Last Product Manager)

Learning objectives:

  • Students test their understanding of product management against practicing PMs
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