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Product
Management

10-Week Part-Time Or 1-Week Accelerated Course

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Develop metrics to measure success

The Big Picture

Gain leadership and communication skills to succeed in this in-demand field. Learn to launch viable, market-ready products and features that solve real problems for your customers.

Understand your users

Skills, Tools, & Strategies

Practice user-centered design, lead a team with a metric-driven product roadmap, and hone communication skills to win stakeholder buy-in for product strategies and proposals.

Create a product roadmap

Product Management in Practice

Develop and validate a product strategy by defining a minimum viable product (MVP), key metrics, personas, wireframes, a product roadmap, and user stories.

Meet your support team

Our educational excellence is a community effort. When you learn at GA, you can always rely on an in-house team of experts to provide guidance and support, whenever you need it.

  • instructor

    Instructors

    Learn industry–grade frameworks, tools, vocabulary, and best practices from a teacher whose daily work involves using them expertly.

  • teaching assistant

    Teaching Assistants

    Taking on new material isn’t always easy. Through office hours and other channels, our TAs are here to provide you with answers, tips, and more.

  • producer

    Course Producers

    Our alumni love their Course Producers, who kept them motivated throughout the course. You can reach out to yours for support anytime.

Explore Student Work

Our student project gallery showcases work by alumni of this course. Take a look — and imagine what you could make possible.

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See What You’ll Learn

Unit 1: Defining Product Management

Introducing Product Management

  • Review course goals and expectations.
  • Describe the role of product management in business and the various responsibilities of a product manager.
  • Pinpoint what makes an effective product manager (PM) — and what makes a bad one.

Exploring the Product Development Life Cycle

  • Describe the role a PM plays in each phase of the product development cycle.
  • Define a hypothesis and how it relates to a problem statement.
  • Identify how product and project risks can affect the development cycle.
  • Explain the concept of product/market fit.

Unit 2: Understanding Your Customer

Executing Customer Development

  • Identify target users for your product or project.
  • Formulate research goals and user interview questions.
  • Practice user interview techniques.

Developing Personas

  • Distill user research into key findings.
  • Differentiate between strong and weak user personas.
  • Create personas based on user research results.

Unit 3: Defining Product Features

Building a Minimum Viable Product

  • Explain the purpose and process of building a minimum viable product (MVP).
  • Identify various ways to build and learn from an MVP.
  • Learn to determine if an MVP achieves product/market fit.
  • Develop an MVP to qualify key risks and assumptions for your product or project.

Outlining and Prioritizing Features

  • Define a feature and where its scope ends.
  • Discuss scope creep and the importance of prioritization in product development.
  • Explore lean development techniques in the context of feature prioritization.
  • Identify the sequence of activities necessary to effectively prioritize product features.
  • Apply a prioritization matrix to your own list of features.

Unit 4: Exploring Product Design

Communicating Your Ideas Visually

  • Discuss how design fits into the product world.
  • Explore different methods of wireframing — sketch, lo-fi, and hi-fi.
  • Create and provide feedback for sketches.
  • Use sketching to tell a story about your product.
  • Identify strategies to collect and dissect feedback from internal stakeholders.

Validating Your Design

  • Identify the five elements of usability and their role in product management.
  • Discover how usability testing fits into a PM's role.
  • Distinguish the differences between approaches to usability testing.
  • Define and craft a task scenario.
  • Create usability tests that follow best practices.

Unit 5: Communicating Your Product

Pitching A Product or Feature

  • Define best practices for pitching and presenting products and features.
  • Learn to gain stakeholder buy-in by leveraging sales tactics and skills.
  • Create a brief presentation to pitch your idea to stakeholders.

Mid-Point Presentations

  • Demonstrate your pitching skills with a brief, in-class presentation.
  • Defend the product decisions you’ve made thus far to classmates as you would to internal stakeholders.
  • Provide constructive feedback and critique on classmate presentations.

Unit 6: Planning for Execution

Defining Product Roadmaps

  • Explore how product roadmaps help align companies and teams.
  • Discover where product roadmaps fit into a PM's workflow.
  • Learn to effectively share your product roadmap to others to acquire internal and external resources.
  • Defend your prioritization decisions using a product roadmap.
  • Incorporate stakeholder feedback while refining your product roadmap.

Setting Metrics and Objectives and Key Results

  • Learn to select the right key performance indicators (KPIs) for different products, features, or user problems.
  • Walk through the customer cycle and apply funnels to increase your understanding.
  • Try out common metric tracking tools used by PMs.
  • Define objectives and key results (OKRs) for your product roadmap.

Unit 7: Practicing Agile Project Management

Understanding Agile Methodology

  • Identify the different stages and roles of scrum and a sprint cycle.
  • Describe best practices for agile project management.
  • Explore the pros and cons of agile development.

Applying Agile Tactics

  • Develop an effective user story and acceptance criteria.
  • Survey different agile tools and methodologies, and discuss the pros and cons of each.
  • Identify the importance of good documentation.
  • Practice estimations for user stories.

Unit 8: Approaching Tech Like a Product Manager

Identifying Essential Tech Knowledge for PMs

  • Define common terms in software development.
  • Approach common PM problems using technical knowledge.
  • Write effective release notes.
  • Discuss best practices for communicating with developers and managing the resource constraints of a dev team.

Flex Session

  • Dive deeper into a relevant topic, as determined by your instructor.

Unit 9: Practicing Stakeholder Management

Defining Keys of Stakeholder Management

  • Identify and classify key stakeholders for various product development situations.
  • Practice effective communication strategies for dealing with different stakeholders.
  • Develop strategies for working with different personality types.
  • Describe the concept of “influencing without authority” as a PM.
  • Learn how to say "no" correctly.

Final Presentations, Part I

  • Effectively communicate your product's progress and product roadmap through an in-class presentation.
  • Provide constructive critique and feedback for your classmates.

Unit 10: Presentations & Next Steps

Final Presentations, Part II

  • Effectively communicate your product's progress and product roadmap through an in-class presentation.
  • Provide constructive critique and feedback for your classmates.

Exploring Potential Next Steps

  • Discover potential growth paths and career opportunities for PMs.
  • Explore the PM job market in your city.
  • Identify resources you can use to continually grow and stay relevant in the world of product management.

Request a Detailed Syllabus

Get Syllabus

“

This course gets at the core of what product management is all about: finding the right solution to the right problem for the right market. Students learn first-hand from experienced Product Managers and are able to apply new skills right away.

Aditi Joshi / Product Instructor Fellow, General Assembly; Product Lead, Consumer Products, IMS Health

Aditi Joshi, General Assembly and IMS Health

Meet your instructors

Learn from skilled instructors with professional experience in the field.

Blair Presley

Online

Blair Presley

Product Director,

DeRoyal Industries

Stina Pagliero

Online

Stina Pagliero

Senior Product Manager,

Pleo

Cait Porte

Boston

Cait Porte

SVP, Product and Customer Experience,

ZMags

Vish Srivastava

Online

Vish Srivastava

Lead Product Manager,

BCG Digital Ventures

Chuck Blevins

Atlanta

Chuck Blevins

,

Chris Bradley

London

Chris Bradley

Founder,

Publicate

Learn In

Washington, D.C.

Choose one of two convenient ways to skill up on Product Management. Our 10-Week Part-Time course fits neatly into busy schedules. The 1-Week Accelerated Full-Time program offers concentrated learning from 9 to 5 each day.

WASHINGTON DC

Sep 4 – Nov 13

Except: Nov 11

Mon & Wed


6:30pm - 8:30pm


$3,950 USD

ONLINE: Accelerated 1-Week

Sep 16 – Sep 21

Mon - Sat


10am - 6pm


$3,950 USD

ONLINE: Accelerated 1-Week

Oct 21 – Oct 26

Mon - Sat


10am - 6pm


$3,950 USD

WASHINGTON DC

Nov 18 – Feb 5

Except: Nov 27, Dec 23, Dec 25, Dec 30, Jan 1

Mon & Wed


6:30pm - 8:30pm


$3,950 USD

ONLINE: Accelerated 1-Week

Dec 16 – Dec 21

Mon - Sat


10am - 6pm


$3,950 USD

Explore New Opportunities

Find out if this course is right for you and your goals. Chat with the GA team, discover the curriculum details, and get a glimpse into student life in an upcoming info session.

Product management info session

Product Management Info Session

GA D.C. (Penn Quarter), 509 7th Street N.W., Washington DC, 20004, United States

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Thanks!

We look forward to meeting you. In the meantime, our admissions team will reach out soon to discuss our courses and your goals.

27
Tuesday, 27 August 6:30pm
GA D.C. (Penn Quarter), 509 7th Street N.W., Washington DC, 20004, United States
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Financing Options

Need payment assistance? Our financing options allow you to focus on your goals instead of the barriers that keep you from reaching them.

Climb

Apply for a 3-year, fixed-rate, merit-based loan* for your tuition and cost-of-living financing. Current income not factored into financing approval for Immersive students.

Meritize

Apply for a 5- or 10-year academic, merit-based loan, defer payment while in school, and gain free access to career services from Meritize.†

Let's figure out the best option for you.

Contact Us

*Must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident; approval pending state of residency.
†Must be a U.S. citizen or permanent resident; approval pending state of residency.

Get Answers

Have questions? We’ve got the answers. Get the details on how you can grow in this course.

  • Why is this course relevant today?

    These days, everyone seems to have an idea that may be “the next big thing,” but very few people actually have the knowledge or skill to bring a product to life. Product management lies at the intersection between business, design, and technology, allowing you to gauge whether a product is viable from a business perspective, desired by your customers, and technically feasible. Whether they’re developing their own product or working within a larger organization, product managers work with key stakeholders, designers, and developers to ensure that the final product meets both customer and business objectives.

  • What practical skill sets can I expect to have upon completion of the course?

    By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

    • Clearly define and describe the role and responsibilities of a product manager.
    • Determine the key risks and assumptions of a given product in order to conduct user testing.
    • Carry out effective user research and apply usability tests to validate product development decisions.
    • Create wireframes, MVPs, and basic prototypes in order to test assumptions about products and features.
    • Use metrics and OKRs to measure a product’s success and track its life cycle.
    • Apply agile best practices by communicating features in epics and user story formats.
    • Speak fluently with developers about technology and technical constraints.
  • What will my weekly schedule be like?

    Our Product Management course is a blended learning experience, combining online and in-person education. Pre-work lessons, which consist of videos, articles, and brief exercises, provide a foundation for in-class instruction. Additionally, you’ll apply what you've learned through homework assignments that culminate in a final project.

  • Are there any prerequisites for this course?

    No, there are no prerequisites for the course.

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