Introduction to product management

Product management is one of the most crucial competencies for startups and scale-ups. Combining customer needs and realities of production during fast growth calls for a strong vision and ability to coordinate the requirements of customer needs, software development, and business development. While designers, developers, and business functions are specifically working on each of these individually, the ability link and balance all these aspects is what makes it or breaks it for growing companies.

Course contents

The course addresses product management as a professional role and an organizational function. The course introduces the tools and concepts that individual products managers can use to create and maintain coordination among the multiple stakeholders within design, marketing, business development and product development. It also introduces concepts for understanding and evaluating organizations and their approaches and competences in product management. The course is a collaboration of Aalto University and the leading product management experts in Finland.

Learning outcomes

After the course, you should be able to

• identify the domain of product management and how it relates it to design, business development, product development, and other connected domains.
• understand how product management – both as a function and as a professional role – contributes to the integration of customer needs, business development, and product development in a growth-oriented technology company.
• understand how the three key areas (customer, business, development) vary in different business models and at different stages of growth, and how it affects the role of product management.
• use basic frameworks to structure customer needs, business requirements, and product development.
• identify and use the key concepts of product management.
• identify different types of roles and goals of product management in different types of organization and in different stages of organization.

Course material

• Perri, Melissa. Escaping the Build Trap : How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value . First edition. Beijing: O’Reilly, 2019. (Available online from Aalto Library)
• Cagan, Marty. Inspired : How the Best Companies Create Technology-Powered Products and Services . Second edition. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley, 2018. (Available online from Aalto Library)
• The course uses also materials distributed and /or referred to by the individual lecturers.

Completion methods

The course is completed by participating (or viewing) the lectures and by returning the weekly assignments.

First lecture on Monday 5.9 10.15-12, the second of Friday 9.9. From thereon lectures are on Tuesdays and Fridays at 12.15-14.00.
For online attendance, the DL for viewing the lecture recordings is the following Monday. Weekly assignments are available at the beginning of each week, and the DL is Monday of the following week.

More information on Aalto University’s course page.

You can get a digital badge after completing this course.

Tuotejohtaminen, Product Management