Cambridge
Academy
In London

Introduction

Product management turns customer needs into successful products by guiding discovery, planning, delivery, and ongoing improvement. This practical program builds core skills in understanding the product lifecycle, defining product goals, prioritizing work, collaborating with teams, and tracking success using simple tools and templates.

 

Course Objectives

• Explain the product manager role and core responsibilities

• Understand product lifecycle stages and key decisions

• Define product vision, value proposition, and success metrics

• Build a basic roadmap and prioritize a product backlog

• Plan launches and manage products after release

 

Target Audience

• Product specialists and aspiring product managers

• Business analysts and project staff supporting products

• Marketing, sales, and operations teams working with product teams

• UX/design and engineering stakeholders

• Anyone involved in product planning and delivery

 

Course Outlines

Day 1: Product Management Basics and Lifecycle Overview

• What product management is (and is not)

• PM roles and key stakeholders

• Product lifecycle stages: discover, build, launch, grow, mature, retire

• Defining product goals and success measures

• Activity: Map a product to lifecycle stages and decisions

 

Day 2: Customer and Market Discovery

• Customer problems, jobs-to-be-done (simple overview)

• Discovery methods: interviews, surveys, observation

• Personas and user journeys (basic)

• Turning insights into problem statements

• Workshop: Write a problem statement + target user profile

 

Day 3: Product Strategy and Prioritization

• Vision and value proposition basics

• Setting product objectives and key metrics (north star + KPIs)

• Prioritization tools: MoSCoW, RICE (simple use)

• Managing stakeholders and trade-offs

• Activity: Prioritize a feature list using a scoring method

 

Day 4: Delivery: Requirements and Collaboration

• Writing user stories and acceptance criteria

• Requirements vs solutions (how to avoid over-specifying)

• Working with design, engineering, QA, and business teams

• Agile delivery basics and roadmap-to-sprint connection

• Case study: Turn a request into a small set of deliverable stories

 

Day 5: Launch, Performance, and Lifecycle Management

• Go-to-market basics: readiness checklist and roles

• Product launch planning: messaging, training, support

• Measuring outcomes: adoption, retention, feedback, defects

• Continuous improvement: iterations, backlog refinement

• Final project: Present a mini product plan (problem + goals + roadmap + launch + metrics)