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Cole Mercer and Evan Kimbrell

In this truly modern course, you'll learn all of the advanced skills and techniques that successful product managers use in their day-to-day working lives. From how to implement vision and strategy to getting a better understanding of how to use data, these lectures are designed for for founders, CEOs and, of course, product managers. With real world examples demonstrating exactly how to execute each approach, you'll find out exactly what to do (and what not to do) to build your company up to the level it deserves.

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In this truly modern course, you'll learn all of the advanced skills and techniques that successful product managers use in their day-to-day working lives. From how to implement vision and strategy to getting a better understanding of how to use data, these lectures are designed for for founders, CEOs and, of course, product managers. With real world examples demonstrating exactly how to execute each approach, you'll find out exactly what to do (and what not to do) to build your company up to the level it deserves.

You already know the basics of being a product manager and securing that all-important job. But ensuring the success of your products is an entirely different ball game. You need to know the framework that transforms any product from zero to hero and the metrics measuring techniques that will allow you to figure out a product's successes and pitfalls. After all, there's nothing that can't be improved.

The first section of this course will take you through two hugely important elements of product management: vision and strategy. Whether you're a founder of a company or the product manager at said company, we'll teach you the difference between the two and how to implement them into the development of your products. The second section goes into a lot more detail on metrics. We'll take you through how to figure out what data to measure and how to fully understand the data that you track. There's also a deep dive into three different industries to demonstrate how metrics can change depending on the product that you're working on.

At the end of it all, you'll have the tools needed to make better, and more profitable, decisions in your product manager role.

Your instructors

Cole Mercer has been a Senior Product Manager at Soundcloud, Bonobos, Mass Relevance, and has taught the Product Management course at General Assembly in Manhattan, NYC. He is now a full-time Product Management and Strategy consultant.

Evan Kimbrell is a top rated Udemy instructor with 19 courses on everything Entrepreneurship. His courses have over 630,000 students and over 32,000 five star reviews. For the past few years, he has also been running a digital agency that has produced over 100 web and mobile products.

What you’ll learn

  • What vision and strategy actually mean.

  • The importance of vision and strategy in product management.

  • What makes a great visionary and how to set a clear vision.

  • How the product development hierarchy works.

  • The most common types of strategy.

  • How to set out an effective roadmap.

  • How to use a more modern and agile form of roadmapping.

  • What metrics actually are.

  • The types of metrics you should be monitoring and optimizing.

  • The various metrics that relate to e-commerce, mobile and marketplace products.

  • How leading and lagging metrics tie into product management.

  • How to analyze metrics using cohorts.

  • Gain an understanding of origin source sorting and how this can skew product metrics.

  • When to use data versus when to use your intuition.

  • Real world examples demonstrating all of the above.

Are there any course requirements or prerequisites?

  • As this is an advanced course, a basic understanding of Product Management would be beneficial.

Who this course is for

  • Anyone looking to learn advanced Product Management techniques.

  • Product Managers and CEOs who want to gain more effective decision-making skills.

Enroll now

What's inside

Learning objectives

  • The difference between vision and strategy
  • How famous leaders use vision to succeed
  • How to use a vision framework for your company and product
  • How to use okrs to track progress
  • How product development hierarchies work
  • How to understand agile roadmapping
  • How to tie your metrics to your overall business strategy
  • When to use data and when to use intuition
  • How to debug metrics with origin source sorting
  • How to recognize cohort anomalies
  • How to design a cohort analysis
  • How to design and run a t-test on cohort data
  • The difference between a leading and lagging metric
  • How metrics differ in multiple industries, including e-commerce, mobile, & marketplaces
  • Show more
  • Show less

Syllabus

Introduction

Whether you already work as a product manager or are simply looking to learn as much about the role as you possibly can, listen up. This course will teach you advanced strategies that will improve your skills in many areas including decision-making and data analytics.

Covered in this lecture:

  • The topics this course will cover.

  • How to watch this course in a way that suits you.

Read more
Join our community on Slack!
Review sheets & resources - all in one PDF!
Product Management Foundations of Vision and Strategy

The first section of the course is all about two very important things: vision and strategy. Learning those skills may seem impossible but a simple step-by-step guide is all you need to transform into the next Steve Jobs.

Covered in this lecture:

  • Why vision and strategy are often talked about in product management.

  • What the following lectures will teach you.

Vision and strategy sound super intimidating but they really don't have to be. Here, we break down everything you need to know about the words and how they play out in the business world.

Covered in this lecture:

  • Clear definitions of vision and strategy.

  • Examples of people who embody those qualities.

  • How the two relate to business.

There are many parts to the product development process and each one requires a specific skillset. The best part is that a product manager doesn't have master each and every one. They simply have to know where the road is taking them.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How the product development process is split up.

  • What each part of the process entails.

  • Real-life examples of each step.

So you know a bit more about what vision is, but you're still confused as to how you can set your big ideas in reality. This little history lesson will show you what to do and what not to do.

Covered in this lecture:

  • The qualities that make a great visionary.

  • The two types of vision you need to know about.

  • What you can learn from the story of Henry Ford's vision.

Being a leader involves leading others, not running around trying to manically do everyone's jobs. When you set your vision, it should be clear enough that others can set their own goals in order to reach it. Here's how to achieve that.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How to set a clear vision.

  • How to use the skills of your team.

  • How this vision fits into the overall product development hierarchy.

Sometimes it's hard to see how a framework works in real life without looking at some companies who are using it to great victory. SpaceX and Facebook are two supremely successful businesses with visionary leaders. Here's how each have used their visions to inform their company goals.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How two real companies use the product development hierarchy.

  • How global and company visions lead to goals and initiatives.

If you thought vision was confusing, I can't wait to see your face when you realize that there is no true way to describe strategy. Luckily, there are a few points to remember that will serve you well.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What strategy is.

  • Three common types.

  • How strategy fits into the product development framework.

Still not sure how to come up with a genius strategy or how to even use that strategy to your advantage? Well, here are a few real life successes from huge companies like Amazon and Airbnb as well as from a personal friend.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How four real companies used strategies successfully.

  • What you can learn from each story.

Weaving all of the lessons from the previous lectures together is simple. All you need to remember is that a vision is of paramount importance, whether you're a CEO or a product manager.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How to apply everything you've learned.

  • Why a product-specific vision is just as important as an overall company vision.

Designing a roadmap by quarter seems the right thing to do, but it can end up being pretty inaccurate. However, there is one alternative.

Covered in this lecture:

  • Why roadmaps are generally laid out according to time.

  • An alternative roadmap design.

You may be used to dealing with traditional roadmaps. If so, you've probably come up against the pitfalls of that particular method. Here's how to swap the old-fashioned version for a more modern strategy that really works.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What agile or OKR roadmapping is.

  • How to execute it.

  • How it relates to the product development framework.

Review & Recap: Strategy & Vision
Q&A: Vision & Strategy
Vision Case Study
Vision Case Study (part 1) - Establishing Vision as a CEO
Vision Case Study (part 2) - Establishing Vision as a Product Manager
Advanced Metrics for Product Managers

Data is a huge part of our lives but all of those numbers mean very little if you don't know how to interpret them correctly. The following lectures will teach you how.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What metrics are.

  • Types of metrics that relate to product management.

  • A brief introduction as to how to use this data effectively.

Bringing metrics and strategy together seems simple but you have to look a little deeper if you really want to make your data as useful as it could be. Here's how to do that in the simplest way possible.

Covered in this lecture:

  • Real life examples of how metrics can assist strategy.

  • The types of metrics to monitor and optimize.

When it comes to choosing which metric to track, you don't want something that's too complicated. This process will show you how to pick an easy-to-follow metric that will serve you well.

Covered in this lecture:

  • All of the things that make up a good metric.

  • The difference between exploratory and reporting metrics.

Prepare for some more buzzwords. Leading and lagging metrics are vital to figure out. Being aware of what both are and how they work can help your business move faster and avoid potentially fatal mistakes.

Covered in this lecture:

  • The definitions of leading and lagging metrics.

  • How the two relate in product management.

  • Examples of each.

In order to analyze your metrics correctly, you may need to split your users up. After all, every one of your users is likely to behave differently depending when they started to use your product.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What a cohort is and why they're important.

  • How to use cohorts to effectively analyze your metrics.

Convinced that cohorts are important? Good. Now you need to know how to set one up and how to analyze all of that data that you'll be collecting.

Covered in this lecture:

  • The three things you need to run a cohort analysis.

  • Changes that could affect a particular cohort.

  • Different types of cohort analyses.

There are certain pitfalls to avoid when dealing with metrics. One of the biggest is origin source sorting. No idea what that is? Have no fear for I'm about to explain all.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What origin sources are.

  • How origin sources can skew metrics.

  • How to avoid the various problems that origin source sorting can create.

If you're still flummoxed by the idea of origin source sorting, I'm going to show you an example to explain how metrics can change over time despite a product remaining the same. Bonus: this example uses my very own products.

Covered in this lecture:

  • A real-life example of how origin source sorting works.

  • How I decided on the metrics for my products.

  • How I used customer data to explain the change in these metrics.

Intro to T-testing
T-testing example
When to Use Data vs. Intuition
Review & Recap: Advanced metrics
Metrics by Industry

A great proportion of products fall into the e-commerce category, so understanding that domain's many metrics may be crucial for your role. If you have no idea what the likes of funnel abandonment and retention mean, listen up.

Covered in this lecture:

  • The many types of e-commerce metrics.

  • Why each metric is important.

  • How to break each metric down to inform strategy.

So many metrics make up the e-commerce world that I couldn't fit them all into one lecture. Here's a deep dive into several more metrics you need to be aware of and what exactly they all mean.

Covered in this lecture:

  • Further e-commerce metrics.

  • How to understand some of the more complicated ones.

Tracking metrics for a product that is centered around a mobile app can be a little trickier. But follow the AARRR framework (in other words, the pirate sound) and you're set.

Covered in this lecture:

  • How to track mobile app metrics using the AARRR framework.

  • How each of these groups are broken down into smaller and more specific metrics.

Just as with any other category, marketplace businesses have a unique set of metrics to track. Here's an overview of what those are and how to use them to help calculate other factors like margins.

Covered in this lecture:

  • What a marketplace is.

  • The three metrics that marketplaces should prioritize.

  • How to break these broad metrics down into smaller ones.

Review & Recap: Metrics in different industries
Interviews with Product Managers
Interview with Melissa Perri, CEO of Produx Labs
Bonus Section
Bonus Lecture

Good to know

Know what's good
, what to watch for
, and possible dealbreakers
Strong fit for everyone from seasoned CEOs to product managers just starting out
Taught by recognized figures in the industry
Thoroughly covers multiple aspects of the product management process
Each lecture comes with examples to cement the teachings provided
The instructors take you through the process of strategy-setting and metric-use
Requires working knowledge of product management

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Reviews summary

Comprehensive product management knowledge

Learners say this course is a comprehensive dive into product management that focuses on giving students a deep understanding of the strategy, vision, and metrics needed to succeed. According to students, the real-world examples and case studies in this course make it especially engaging and applicable to real-world work.
Concrete examples help deepen understanding.
"I really loved the case studies and "real world" examples."
"I find it easier to grasp the concepts when you can see how it is implemented."
Covers all aspects of product management strategy.
"This was a very enlightening course!"
"I really loved the case studies and "real world" examples."

Activities

Be better prepared before your course. Deepen your understanding during and after it. Supplement your coursework and achieve mastery of the topics covered in Advanced Product Management: Vision, Strategy & Metrics with these activities:
Review core product management terms
Establish a strong foundation for understanding the concepts that underlie the course content.
Browse courses on Product Management
Show steps
  • Read the first chapter of a product management book.
  • Review your class notes from previous product management courses.
  • Take a practice quiz on product management terminology.
Practice writing user stories
Develop proficiency in writing user stories, which are essential for effective product management.
Browse courses on User Stories
Show steps
  • Read a few articles or blog posts on writing user stories.
  • Write 10 user stories for a product that you are familiar with.
  • Get feedback on your user stories from a peer or mentor.
Participate in a peer-led discussion group
Engage with other students to exchange ideas, share experiences, and gain different perspectives on product management.
Browse courses on Product Management
Show steps
  • Find a peer-led discussion group that focuses on product management.
  • Attend the discussion group regularly and participate in the discussions.
  • Share your own insights and experiences with the group.
Five other activities
Expand to see all activities and additional details
Show all eight activities
Read Inspired by Marty Cagan
Gain insights from a leading expert on product management to solidify your understanding of the concepts discussed in the course.
View Transformed on Amazon
Show steps
  • Read the first five chapters of the book.
  • Summarize the key takeaways from each chapter in your own words.
  • Discuss the book's concepts with a peer or mentor.
Build a product roadmap for a real-world business
Develop a comprehensive understanding of how product roadmaps are created and used.
Browse courses on Product Development
Show steps
  • Choose a business that you are familiar with and analyze their current product portfolio.
  • Identify the business goals and objectives that the new product should address.
  • Create a product roadmap that outlines the key milestones and deliverables for the new product.
  • Present your product roadmap to a peer or mentor for feedback.
Complete tutorials on agile product development
Enhance your understanding of agile development methodologies and how they can be applied to product management.
Browse courses on Agile Development
Show steps
  • Find a reputable online tutorial on agile product development.
  • Complete the tutorial and take notes on the key concepts.
  • Apply the concepts you learned to a real-world product development scenario.
Create a product launch plan
Integrate your knowledge of product management and marketing to develop a comprehensive plan for launching a new product.
Browse courses on Product Launch
Show steps
  • Define the target market for the new product.
  • Develop a marketing strategy to reach the target market.
  • Create a launch timeline and budget.
  • Develop a plan for measuring the success of the product launch.
Participate in a product management hackathon
Apply your product management skills in a competitive environment to solve real-world product challenges.
Browse courses on Product Management
Show steps
  • Find a product management hackathon that is relevant to your interests.
  • Form a team and develop a product idea.
  • Build a prototype and present your product to a panel of judges.

Career center

Learners who complete Advanced Product Management: Vision, Strategy & Metrics will develop knowledge and skills that may be useful to these careers:
Product Manager
Product Managers are responsible for managing the development, production, and marketing of products. This course can help Product Managers build the skills necessary to successfully lead teams and develop valuable products. By understanding the principles of vision, strategy, and metrics, Product Managers can better align their products with customer needs and business goals.
Chief Product Officer
Chief Product Officers are responsible for overseeing the entire product development process, from ideation to launch. This course can help Chief Product Officers develop the skills needed to create a successful product strategy and manage a team of Product Managers. Through the study of metrics, strategy, and vision, Chief Product Officers can make data-driven decisions that drive product success.
Product Owner
Product Owners are responsible for defining and managing the product backlog, prioritizing features, and working with the development team to ensure that the product meets customer needs. This course can help Product Owners build the skills to effectively communicate with stakeholders, manage the product roadmap, and track product progress. Knowledge of strategy, vision, and metrics is essential for Product Owners to prioritize the most valuable features and ensure that the product is successful.
Product Analyst
Product Analysts are responsible for collecting and analyzing data to help improve products. This course can help Product Analysts develop the skills needed to effectively measure product usage, identify trends, and provide insights to Product Managers and other stakeholders. Metrics play a key role in the work of Product Analysts, and this course can help them build a strong foundation in this area.
Product Designer
Product Designers are responsible for designing the user interface and user experience of products. This course can help Product Designers develop the skills needed to create products that are both visually appealing and easy to use. By understanding the principles of vision and strategy, Product Designers can create products that align with business goals and meet customer needs. Metrics are also essential for Product Designers to track the success of their designs and make data-driven decisions.
Business Analyst
Business Analysts are responsible for analyzing business processes and recommending ways to improve efficiency and effectiveness. This course can help Business Analysts build the skills needed to effectively gather and analyze data, develop solutions, and communicate their findings to stakeholders. Metrics are essential for Business Analysts to measure the impact of their work and ensure that their recommendations are based on data.
Consultant
Consultants provide advice and guidance to businesses on a variety of topics, including product development. This course can help Consultants develop the skills needed to effectively work with clients, understand their needs, and develop and implement solutions. By understanding the principles of vision, strategy, and metrics, Consultants can provide valuable insights to their clients and help them achieve their business goals.
Entrepreneur
Entrepreneurs are responsible for starting and running their own businesses. This course can help Entrepreneurs develop the skills needed to identify opportunities, develop business plans, and launch and grow their businesses. By understanding the principles of vision, strategy, and metrics, Entrepreneurs can make informed decisions that increase their chances of success.
Sales Manager
Sales Managers are responsible for leading and managing sales teams to achieve sales goals. This course can help Sales Managers develop the skills needed to effectively motivate and train their teams, develop sales strategies, and track sales performance. Metrics are essential for Sales Managers to measure the success of their teams and ensure that they are meeting their targets.
Marketing Manager
Marketing Managers are responsible for developing and executing marketing campaigns to promote products and services. This course can help Marketing Managers develop the skills needed to effectively identify target markets, develop marketing strategies, and measure the success of their campaigns. Metrics play a key role in the work of Marketing Managers, and this course can help them build a strong foundation in this area.
General Manager
General Managers are responsible for overseeing the operations of a business or division. This course can help General Managers develop the skills needed to effectively manage teams, allocate resources, and make strategic decisions. By understanding the principles of vision, strategy, and metrics, General Managers can create a successful business strategy and ensure that their teams are working towards common goals.
UX Researcher
UX Researchers are responsible for conducting user research to understand user needs and improve the user experience of products. This course can help UX Researchers develop the skills needed to effectively conduct user interviews, analyze data, and make recommendations to product teams. Metrics play a key role in the work of UX Researchers, and this course can help them build a strong foundation in this area.
Data Analyst
Data Analysts are responsible for collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to identify trends and patterns. This course may be useful for Data Analysts who want to learn more about product management and how to use data to drive product decisions.
Software Engineer
Software Engineers are responsible for designing, developing, and maintaining software applications. This course may be useful for Software Engineers who want to learn more about product management and how to work with product teams to develop successful products.
Project Manager
Project Managers are responsible for planning, executing, and closing projects. This course may be useful for Project Managers who want to learn more about product management and how to manage product development projects.

Reading list

We've selected 13 books that we think will supplement your learning. Use these to develop background knowledge, enrich your coursework, and gain a deeper understanding of the topics covered in Advanced Product Management: Vision, Strategy & Metrics.
Dives into the importance of inspiration and how it affects the process of creating a successful product.
Classic in the field of product management and provides a framework for understanding the challenges of bringing a new product to market.
Provides a practical guide to using design thinking to solve problems and create innovative products.
Collection of essays from a successful entrepreneur and investor, providing valuable insights into the challenges of building a successful business.

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