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J H edited this page Feb 10, 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
      • Scaffolding and stubbing your product
    • 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
    • Long vs short-term strategy
      • Product strategy (vision + goals) vs product roadmap (features + NCP)
      • Setting Goals
  • Q&A

Readings:

Homework:

  • Create the initial version of your Narrative, System Diagram & Wedge for your project
  • Describe your potential Market Size & Initial Audience in a paragraph or two
  • Fill out Product Development prioritization worksheet for your project (or an assigned app)
  • Read this week’s readings and the readings for the next class

Session 2: 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:

  • Complete the initial version of your Dashboard
  • Create a sample experiment (See Slide 32)
  • Choose some of your favorite apps and make sure they are downloaded on your device for next class; print out three screenshots you want to discuss/critique and bring them to class
  • Read the readings for the next class

Session 3: 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:

  • Execute an initial Design Sprint around your product narrative: teams choose a User Story together, create Mindmap, Crazy 8s, and Solution Sketch artifacts individually, and then Voting together as a team
  • Read the readings for the next class

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

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn how to create product roadmaps and make consistent forward progress developing their new products

Lecture (slides):

  • Product development vs software development
    • Product quality vs software quality
    • Following an impact map
    • Goals vs features
  • Product roadmaps and prioritization
    • Build the right thing vs build the thing right
    • Forming a roadmap
    • Sizing strategy: The Snake vs The Fox
    • Prioritization strategies
    • Thinking through features
    • Translating features to tasks
  • Rollout Strategies
    • Targeting audiences
    • Identifying pain points in scaling
    • % Rollout vs Experiments
    • Apps vs the rest of your system
    • Audience awareness
  • There are many methodologies
    • Why agile? Or why not?
    • Don’t be dogmatic!
    • A generalized methodology
      • 4 Ps: Plan, Progress, Postmortem, Proclaim
        • 3 Ps...
  • How things go wrong
    • Bad estimation
    • Ratholes
    • Build the right thing vs build the thing right
    • Individual vs issues
    • How to get back on track—or change track

Homework:

  • Compare your individual Product Development Prioritization worksheets as a team and create a team Product Development Prioritization till end of Semester Submit your homework here

Readings:

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

Learning objectives:

  • Students learn how to be responsive to unplanned situations and team dynamics during development of their products

Lecture (slides):

  • Managing the process
    • Handling Hi-Tempo Situations
      • Critical bugs
      • Security breaches
      • Traffic spikes
      • Exceptional use cases
      • Situation control while firefighting
    • Moving Plutonium
      • Keeping the calm
  • Managing the team
    • Leading through transparency
    • Setting team tone
    • Interpersonal dynamics
    • Post mortems / retros

Readings:

Homework:

  • Perform a Blameless Post-Mortem, at least two stories, five whys each (also see John Allspaw's article in the readings) Submit Work Here
  • Read the readings for the next class (Class 4)

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

Learning Objectives:

  • Students learn how to assess and improve product quality

Lecture (slides):

  • Product quality
    • Software quality vs product quality
    • Bugs
      • Severity and coverage
      • Prioritization: which bugs to fix and when
    • Architecture
      • Bottleneck analysis
    • Technical debt
      • When to repay debt—or not
      • Refactoring
  • Pre-mortems
    • When and how

Readings:

Homework:

  • Complete the pre-mortem you started in class
  • Read the readings for the next class

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.

Lecture (slides):

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

Learning objectives:

  • Students test their understanding of product management against practicing PMs

Lecture (slides):

  • Guest panel
    • Students discuss their understanding of PM with Guests

Readings:

Homework:

  • None
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