Learn Product Management to Grow as an Engineer

As promised in the previous lecture, let’s speak about who a product manager is.

Covered in the video:

• Factors that influence the Product Manager's scope of work.

• Things common for every successful Product Manager.

This course includes a project where you'll either work on improving an existing product or create a new one from scratch.

The project is optional, and deciding whether to invest time in it or skip it is entirely up to you.

Covered in the video:

• Two options for your course project.

Unless your role is a software engineer AND founder OR co-founder of a company, you may not be deeply involved in strategic decision-making. Also, it's common in many companies to keep development teams separate from business-related matters, often to minimize distractions and ensure smooth project execution.

But, having a solid understanding of WHY you're building something can bring you many benefits at your workplace.

Covered in the video:

• Why understanding strategic topics is important for developers, regardless of the programming language they use (Python, JavaScript, Java, or any other)

Why every product needs a vision?

And why is vision alone not enough for a product team to act on? You will find out after watching this video.

Covered in the video:

• Who drives a product vision & strategy at an early stage of a company.

• What is a product/market fit, and why it’s important to find it.

• What is a product vision and strategy with examples.

• When product function starts contributing to product vision and strategy.

In this video, we'll dive into a crucial element that supports the product vision and strategy we discussed in the previous lecture: strategic product roadmaps.

Covered in the video:

• What is a product roadmap? Key components of a roadmap.

• Example of the public roadmap from ProdPad, a product management software that supports roadmap development.

• How Software Engineers can benefit from knowing and understanding a company's strategic roadmap, regardless of the programming language they use (Python, JavaScript, Java, or any other).

Our discussion about product vision, strategy, and strategic roadmap won’t be complete unless we speak about how to measure the product strategy progress.

And this is where the product goals come in.

Covered in the video:

• What product goals are.

• How to set up goals using the OKRs technique.

Up to this point in the course, we’ve covered how we set strategic directions in product management, including vision, strategy, roadmap, and product goals.

But that’s not enough for us to start executing the plans.

Please watch this lecture to find out why.

Covered in the video:

• What alignment means and why it's important to create it.

• What are the main alignment themes and topics?

• Introduction to an alignment technique - Impact Mapping.

• Impact Mapping steps.

Through this short quiz, let's make sure that you are comfortable with the strategic topics on the product management process :)

If a problem is already well understood or we need to fix a product bug, we can start working on the solution right away.

But, on the other hand, if we need to understand a problem more, we can carry on with additional research to discover and validate a problem.

Covered in the video:

• Why problem discovery and validation are activities that developers should be part of, irrespective of the programming language they use (Python, JavaScript, Java, or any other).

In this lecture, let's talk about how to estimate your product's market size.

You'll need this analysis to understand the size of the product opportunity and if there will be enough demand for your product.

Covered in the lecture:

• Three parameters to size up a market.

• Top-down, bottom-up, and value theory approaches to calculate the market size.

In this video, let's start talking about competitor analysis - a regular activity within an end-to-end product management process.

Competitor analysis helps you identify the opportunities and threats to your product and business.

It also lets you strategize what opportunities to prioritize to serve your customers better and get prospective customers to switch from competing products.

Covered in the video:

• Goals of competitor analysis.

• Three types of competitors: direct competitors, secondary (or indirect) competitors, and replacement competitors.

• Where you can find information on your product competitors.

Let's do a quick check of how well you understood the topics we've covered so far in this section.

This lecture will introduce you to an important discipline - User research -that helps you to get to know your customers and users better, build up empathy with them, and create products they love.

You will also learn how the User research fits into the Product Management process.

Covered in the video:

• Difference between customers and users.

• Definition of the User research and how it fits into the product development.

• Overview of the steps of the User research process.

In this two-part lecture, we will start talking about the first step of the User research process - defining research goals, objectives, and hypotheses.

We will also define the hypothesis, goals, and objectives for the course follow-along project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Formulating assumptions about a problem.

• How to transform assumptions into problem hypotheses.

This is the second part of the lecture where we talk about the first step of the User research process - defining research goals, objectives, and hypotheses.

We will also define the hypothesis, goals, and objectives for the course follow-along project.

Covered in the lecture:

• How to define goals and objectives for a research project.

In this lecture, we will go through the most popular methods to conduct research.

Covered in the lecture:

• Ten of the most popular research methods you must be aware of

In the lecture, we will talk about how you can select which method to choose for your research project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Difference between qualitative and quantitative research methods.

• How to select a research method based on the stage of product development.

In this lecture, we will select research methods for the problem discovery stage for the course follow-along project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Research methods that will be used for the course project problem discovery.

In this two-part lecture, we will talk about finding target users for a problem you want to solve.

Covered in the lecture:

• How to do user segmentation to find your target group.

• Should you aim to find a broad or narrow user segment?

• How to prioritize target user segments.

This is the second part of the lecture where we talk about finding target users for a problem you want to solve.

Covered in the lecture:

• How to do user segmentation to find your target group.

• Should you aim to find a broad or narrow user segment?

• How to prioritize target user segments.

Let’s discuss why we need a user persona tool when discovering a problem and solution and how to create it.

Covered in the lecture:

• User persona definition.

• Main segments that make up a user persona.

• If a persona is the same as a user group.

• When to create a user persona, and how many do you need.

• Tools available for developing a persona.

In this video, let's look at how to recruit participants for your user research project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Steps to recruiting research participants.

• When to speak with users and non-users of your product.

• Most common channels for recruiting prospective users.

The second step in recruiting research participants is to create an interview screener. So let’s figure out how to make it.

Covered in the lecture:

• Why you need an interview screener.

• How to come up with questions for your screener.

• Tools available to create a good interview screener.

The final step in recruiting research participants is to send out invitations to participate in your research. Let’s talk about how to organize this process.

Covered in the lecture:

• What channels to use for sending out invitations.

• Whom to invite from your product team.

• How many interviews do you need.

• Should you offer any incentives for people to talk to you?

We are almost ready to begin interviewing users and collecting the first insights regarding the problem we want to solve.

There is one last task we have to take care of before we are all set to meet with users - creating an interview discussion guide.

Covered in the lecture:

• Why you need a discussion guide.

• Discussion guide structure.

• Tips on creating a discussion guide.

In this video, Anna will give her final recommendations for making the most out of your user interviews.

Covered in the lecture:

• Ten things that will help you to conduct an insightful user interview.

In this video, we will begin discussing how you can analyze findings from your research (e.g., user interviews) and uncover insights to help you ideate and design a solution.

Covered in the lecture:

• Why you need to make notes during your interviews.

• What to look for when analyzing your interview notes.

• What a validated hypothesis is.

• What to do if, after more than ten interviews, you are still not getting answers to your research questions?

So after you've analyzed interview findings using one or several techniques we covered in the previous videos, it's time to formulate a "problem statement" or "point of view statement."

Covered in the lecture:

• What is a problem statement?

• Templates to write a problem statement.

• Problem statement examples.

So we've reached the final step of our user research project - creating a research report.

Covered in the lecture:

• The purpose of a research report.

• Things to include in your report.

• With whom you should share a report.

In this two-part video, Anna will walk you through the problem discovery interviews for the follow-along project, the interview findings, and the decision she made on whether she wants to continue working on the same idea or pivot to something different.

Covered in the lecture:

• The context behind the JustDo project.

• JustDo problem hypotheses, goals & objectives of the research project.

• Target audience.

• Channels used to approach the target users.

• Interview screener questions.

This is the second part of the video where Anna walks you through the problem discovery interviews for the follow-along project, the interview findings, and the decision she made on whether she wants to continue working on the same idea or pivot to something different.

Covered in the lecture:

• Insights from the user interviews and what hypotheses have been validated.

• Course project's problem statement.

• Next steps - go/no go for the project.

• Final recommendations on what to pay attention to when doing a research project.

Now that you have collected all the discovery findings, let's see how we can sum them up using the Impact Mapping framework.

By filling in the Impact Map and sharing it with product stakeholders you make sure that all parties stay on the same page of project planning and execution.

Covered in the video:

• How to define goals for the Impact Mapping.

• Defining the first and second levels of the Impact Map for the course project - Objective and Actors.

Now that you have collected all the discovery findings, let's see how we can sum them up using the Impact Mapping framework.

By filling in the Impact Map and sharing it with product stakeholders you make sure that all parties stay on the same page of project planning and execution.

Covered in the video:

• Defining the third level of the Impact Map for the course project - Impacts.

Let's check your understanding of the user research process.

Welcome to the new section of the course called "Solution Discovery."

So far, we have invested a significant amount of time in researching and validating the right problem to solve for our users.

Now, we're ready to move forward with the second part of the product discovery track: designing and validating our solution.

Covered in the video:

• Steps of the Solution Discovery process.

In this video, we will discuss how to brainstorm solutions that might solve a problem you've been discovering in the previous sections of the course.

Covered in the video:

• Overview of the steps of the brainstorming process.

• Tips and tricks on organizing and handling productive brainstorming sessions.

In this video, we will be practicing creating How Might We questions that we need as a seed for the solution ideation process.

As always, Anna will use her follow-along project as an example

In this video, we will learn how to define the fourth level of the Impact Map - solutions or deliverables.

Anna will also show you the results of the solution ideation workshop she ran for the course project and explain how she envisions each solution could work.

Covered in the video:

• Recap of step 4 of the Impact Mapping process.

• Overview of five possible solutions for the course project and their pros and cons.

In this and the following two lectures, we will discuss prioritization techniques.

Covered in the video:

• Why and when do you need to make prioritization calls.

• What are some typical yet bad prioritization practices still in place in some companies?

In this lecture, we will be covering the RICE prioritization framework.

This lecture is important since you need at least one prioritization framework in your toolkit, and it’s a good idea to start with RICE.

Covered in the video:

• Intro to RICE prioritization.

• Overview of four factors included in the framework: reach, impact, confidence, effort.

• Two additional criteria you can include in the framework.

Let's check your knowledge of the topics we have covered in this section.

It will be a follow-along video where Anna will show you her process behind prioritizing solutions for the course project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Prioritizing five possible solutions for JustDo with the RICE framework.

Now that we've prioritized the most promising solution, let's figure out what assumptions we are making regarding the solution.

Understanding solution assumptions helps us to assess major risks associated with solution development and launch.

Covered in the lecture:

• Overview of solution risks relative to the lifecycle stage of a company.

Let's list down the assumptions about the solution for the course project.

Covered in the lecture:

• Overview of the major assumptions for the JustDo solution.

The next question we have to answer after we define assumptions about our solution is what assumptions need further testing. Yes, you don't need to test all assumptions from your list!

Covered in the lecture:

• What is a "leap-of-faith" assumption?

• How to identify assumptions that need further testing.

So far, we have done a great job defining solution assumptions, finding the riskiest ones, and learning about solution prototyping techniques.

Now it's time to combine these pieces and design our prototype experiment.

Covered in the lecture:

• Why do we need to run experiments?

• What is a Minimum Viable Experiment?

• Three components of every experiment.

• How to define solution hypotheses.

Welcome to the second part of the lecture, where we will continue talking about planning your prototype experiments.

Covered in the lecture:

• Deciding what tests we will run to validate/invalidate hypotheses.

• Defining success metrics for every experiment.

In this video, And will show you how she describes experiments for the course project. So if you follow along, please continue watching the video.

Covered in the lecture:

• Planning prototype experiments for the course project.

Welcome to the new chapter of the course! Here we will cover the last step of the discovery process and speak about how to validate your solution through prototype testing.

In this video, we will discuss how to test solution usability.

Covered in the video:

• Why test usability.

• Goals of the usability testing.

• Four types of usability testing.

In this video, we will continue talking about usability testing.

Covered in the video:

• How to prepare for the testing.

• How to conduct the test to get the maximum insights from your target users.

Welcome back to the series of lectures where we talk about usability testing.

This time we will discuss how to select participants for your usability tests.

Covered in the video:

• How many participants do you need for each test.

• How to recruit your target users.

This video will cover how to collect feedback on solution desirability.

Covered in the video:

• Why you need to run desirability tests.

• Examples of questions you can ask during the test.

• How desirability testing fits into the solution validation process.

In this video, we will cover how to get solution feedback from your internal teams.

Covered in the video:

• How to validate solution feasibility.

• How to make sure that your solution is business viable.

It's time to check your knowledge!

Finally, we are close to launching our product to the market!

It's one of the major milestones for every product team, as it's incredibly rewarding to see all your and your colleagues' hard work go live and start bringing value to the customers.

In this section, we will go through the types of launches and examples of goals you can set for the launch.

We will also review the launch process and go through every step in detail.

In this video, we will discuss what it means to launch a product to market, what goals companies typically try to achieve when launching a product, and what common types of launches you need to be familiar with.

Covered in the video:

• What it means to launch a product.

• Product Launch goals.

• Soft launch vs. Full-scale launch.

In this video, we will learn how to prepare for launching a product.

Covered in the video:

• Three phases of the launch process.

• What is a launch checklist?

• Key activities to include in the launch checklist.

In this video, we will continue discussing how to prepare for a product launch.

Covered in the video:

• Key activities to include in the launch checklist.

After watching the lecture, you will know what happens on the launch day and the key activities of the post-launch stage.

Covered in the video:

• Things to do on a launch day.

• Next steps after the launch.

Let's find out if you understand the key concepts covered in this section :)