To succeed in product management, you need ongoing education. Product managers worldwide keep learning and finding new ways to work in an ever-evolving product environment.
Fortunately, you don’t have to look far to find a comprehensive program that will teach you the basics (and more) of the field. There are plenty of product management courses online that will equip you with job-ready skills in as little as four weeks.
Coursera is one of the best e-learning platforms for developing your skills. With dozens of courses in the product management category, it’s easy to find the right program for your needs, budget, and learning style.
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How to Choose the Best Product Management Course
The internet is packed with tools, resources, videos, and other material teaching product management basics. Although useful, these random resources often lack cohesion. However, online learning platforms such as Coursera have established well-structured courses to transfer job-ready skills in an organized manner.
When you search for product management courses on Coursera, you’ll find plenty of high-quality programs from world-renowned institutions such as the University of Virginia, University of Alberta, IE Business School, Amazon Web Services, Israel Institute of Technology and more.
But how to choose the best one for you?
The answer ultimately comes down to three things:
- Your interests or end goal
- Your schedule
- Your needs
Plenty of introductory courses cover general aspects of product management and are focused on theory. Then there are some specialized programs that teach drug product or software product management. Knowing what your interests are will help you choose a course that’s better suited for you.
Product management courses on Coursera last from a couple of days to up to a few months. Although all courses are self-paced, keeping up with a twelve-week course can be challenging if you need to gain those skills faster. That’s why it’s important to pick a course that won’t make you feel overwhelmed with an excruciatingly long (or surprisingly short) schedule.
The best product management course also needs to match your needs. Do you need a product management certification to showcase on your LinkedIn page or resume? If so, you’ll want to sign up for Coursera Specialization programs that offer such a feature. If you’re only in for casual hobby learning, you can audit the courses without paying a dime. However, note that auditing doesn’t include project assignments and certificates.
Best Product Management Courses – Coursera
As previously mentioned, the best product management course for you depends on your budget, interest, and needs. We’ve included the most popular courses that are flexible enough to fit most learners’ needs and come in free and premium versions.
1. Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals by University of Virginia
- Cost: 7-day free trial, then $49 per month. Free audit available.
- Duration: +-11 hours
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
The Modern Fundamentals of Digital Product Management course is available as a part of two programs – Digital Product Management Specialization and Leading the Modern Day Business Specialization.
The course consists of reading material, practice exercises, and there’s also a quiz at the end of each week to verify your progress. You need to complete all quizzes and assignments to get a certificate (only available in the premium version).
The course allows you to learn the essentials of product management, design thinking, innovation pipeline, lean startup, and product/market fit.
Students also get a bunch of resources, tools, and tutorials to build the necessary skills outside the online classroom.
2. Digital Product Management Specialization
- Cost: 7-day free trial, then $49 per month. Free audit available.
- Duration: +-5 months
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
If the abovementioned course is too basic for you, you can sign up for the full program offered by the University of Virginia. This specialization takes five months to complete, it’s suitable for complete beginners, and it consists of applied learning projects on top of the regular curriculum.
Students follow pre-recorded video lectures, complete quizzes, assignments, and receive hands-on projects that they have to complete in order to finish the specialization successfully. The specialization consists of five courses covering the fundamentals of digital product management, Agile and Design Thinking, Hypothesis-driven development, Agile Analytics, and Managing an Agile Team.
3. Brand and Product Management
- Cost: $49 per month with a certificate. Free audit available
- Duration: +-14 hours
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
The Brand and Product Management course offered by IE Business School is a part of the Marketing Mix Implementation Specialization and teaches the basics of brand development, portfolios, and architecture, launching new products, product strategy concepts, communicating an offer, and more.
The course consists of pre-recorded video lectures, reading materials, and quizzes. Students are invited to do quizzes throughout the course to check their learning progress. You can access the course content on the web or your phone anytime.
The course is designed to last four weeks, and each week teaches different topics. However, the course is self-paced. You have to complete all assignments by the end of the course to get a certificate upon completion.
4. Real-World Product Management Specialization
- Cost: 7-day trial; $49 for a certificate. Free audit available
- Duration: +-4 months
- Qualification:Certificate of completion
This course sponsored by Amazon Web Services (AWS) teaches product management skills that can rival entry-level PMs at Google, Amazon, Facebook, or Silicon Valley startups.
The course offers an insight into how elite PMs work using interviews, personas, MPVs, PRDs, competitive analyses, and more. The lead instructor is a General Manager of Data Protection Services at AWS and a former Google PM.
Students get to build their own product by mapping the customer personas, involving non-buyers to influence buyers, drafting PRDs and PRFAQs, size the product market, designing A/B tests, and much more.
The course consists of pre-recorded video lectures, reading materials, assignments, and quizzes.
5. Product Management Essentials
- Cost: 7-day trial; $49 with a certificate. Free audit is available
- Duration: +-6 hours
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
If you’re an absolute beginner in product management and still don’t have a clear picture of what’s expected from you in this role, then this course may be right for you.
It’s also one of the shortest courses on Coursera – only lasting six hours. However, it’s packed with valuable information on what’s expected from a product manager inside an organization, what are their key responsibilities, and what skills are needed to carry out the responsibilities.
This course is offered by the University of Maryland, and it’s a part of a specialization called Product Ideation, Design, and Management. It consists of pre-recorded video lessons, quizzes, and assignments at the end of each module.
6. New Product Development – Develop Your Own Product
- Cost: 7-day trial; $49 with certificate. Free audit available
- Duration: Self-paced
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
This course teaches students the basics of new product development and provides a holistic field view. It also shows how to plan, select, monitor, and control new product development projects using the right tools and techniques.
By the end of this course sponsored by Technion Israel Institute of Technology, students are able to create a feasible plan for their own product and execute it in a dynamic environment.
The course consists of pre-recorded video lectures, readings, and quizzes. There are also assignments by the end of each module. This course requires some basic knowledge in product management. If you’re a complete beginner, it’s better to start with more beginner-friendly solutions from this list.
7. Software Product Management Specialization
- Cost: 7-day trial; $49 per month with a certificate. Free audit available
- Duration: +-6 months
- Qualification: Certificate of completion
The Software Product Management course offered by the University of Alberta is one of the most comprehensive programs that teaches you product and project management basics.
The course is focused on Agile Practices and explains the fundamentals of Agile development and interactions to run the market of effective software products.
The specialization consists of six courses with pre-recorded video lectures, quizzes, assignments, and real-world projects.
You’ll also get to practice some management techniques in industry-inspired scenarios, manage a team of developers, and share your experiences with a software product management community on the platform.
Conclusion
Kickstarting a career in the quickly evolving field that is product management calls for a dynamic learning environment. Whether you’re only starting or looking to polish your product management skills, Coursera has just the right program for you.
Coursera is a highly recommended platform due to its partnership with giant corporations and higher education institutions, affordable pricing, a wide variety of courses, and an intuitive interface. Most product management courses are taught by experts from some of the world’s most renowned corporations and higher education institutions and universities. And thanks to the flexible learning pace and free auditing, you can even learn new skills without affecting your schedule or budget.
Thanks to plenty of benefits, there’s no reason why Coursera shouldn’t be your go-to learning platform for getting started in product management.