Professional Certificate in Product Management

Product management has evolved rapidly over the last two years, as companies have responded to pandemic-driven shifts by expanding their platform-based and digital product offerings. That evolution has led to an increased demand for skillful product managers across all industries, and global powerhouses like Google, Tesla, Adobe, Salesforce, Apple, and Meta, are focused on hiring them.

This intensified emphasis on product management is why the role itself is growing, with many product managers becoming direct owners of P&L in their companies. But all of this transformation—within the industry and the role—requires highly skilled professionals to help lead the way.

The Professional Certificate in Product Management from Kellogg Executive Education harnesses the best practices, frameworks, and hard and soft skills to enhance your success as a product manager. Whether you are launching your product management career or looking to hone your skills at a multinational corporation or a micro start-up, this program will provide you with the hands-on skills needed to succeed in this high-growth field.

Advance Your Career in Product Management

As you consider all the different directions your career could turn, Kellogg Executive Education wants to help you make an honest evaluation of the options—and the skills that will deliver the most commercial impact for employers.

In this program, you will develop an aptitude for the end-to-end process of discovering, designing, developing, delivering, and managing products. You will build and manage a product roadmap through user research, prototyping, and product analysis. With Kellogg Executive Education, you learn by doing. And you’ll learn from the top marketing and product management minds in the world.

• 17,725 The number of job openings for product managers listed on Glassdoor in 2022 (Source: Glassdoor)
• $125,317 The average annual salary for a product manager in the U.S. in 2022 (Source: Glassdoor)
• 26% The percentage of product managers employed by Fortune 500 companies in 2022 (Source: Zippia)

Who Is This Program For?

The Professional Certificate in Product Management from Kellogg Executive Education is for those who want to build on or formalize their training for product management roles. The certificate will not only give you a broad perspective of the role but will also dig deep into many of the skills that will help you stand out to employers. This program is ideal for the following categories:

• Early-career professionals with one to five years of experience as a product manager or in a product support role
• Professionals making a lateral career move from an adjacent field such as engineering, UX/UI, marketing, or sales

Key Takeaways

• Master the end-to-end process of discovering, designing, developing, delivering, and managing products.
• Learn the strategic thinking and tactical implementation skills needed to become a professional product manager.
• Gain experience in product management tools and methodologies including project management, UI/UX (Miro), wireframing (Balsamiq), and analytics (Google Analytics)
• Hone your communication, negotiation, and influence skills to effectively manage people and relationships.
• Apply frameworks and tools to develop a start-to-finish product marketing plan.

Build Your Skill Set

Phase 1 Skills: Build Your Prototype

• Discover Customer Insights for Product Innovation
• Define Product Requirements
• Design Your Business Model
• Analyze the Numbers
• Roadmap Your Strategy

Phase 2 Skills: Go to Market

• Communicate like a Pro
• Manage Your Partner Ecosystem
• Develop the Growth-Hacker Mindset
• Assess the Data, Choose the Right Tool
• Manage Stakeholder Relationships

Program Topics

• Module 1: Introduction to Product Management. Learn what a product manager (PM) does and how the role varies across industries, company size, and format (B2B and B2C). Learn what you need to succeed in this role and what makes an outstanding product manager.
• Module 2: Customer Insights for Product Innovation. Learn about the nature, sources, and tools of customer insights (e.g., ethnography, customer experience mapping, customer advisory boards, product telemetry, human factors research), and move from insights to action.
• Module 3: Analyzing Product Opportunities. Learn how to define and find product opportunities, Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework, and assess opportunities using the Real-Win-Worth It (R-W-W) framework.
• Module 4: Product Discovery and Requirements Definition. Learn how to create a discovery hypothesis, measure product-market fit, apply the MVP framework (user stories, epics, and themes), and address the Agile requirements document.
• Module 5: Business Model Design. Learn the definition and importance of business models and business model taxonomy—Freemium, Software as a Service (SaaS), and marketplace models, and equip yourself to choose the right business model for your product.
• Module 6: Financial Analysis for Product Managers . Understand the economics of a SaaS business (CLV, CAC, MRR, MRR Expansion, Churn); learn about analyses such as Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), and Product Profitability; and explore approaches to product pricing.
• Module 7: UI/UX Design for Product Managers. Learn the fundamentals of UX, conceptual, interaction, and virtual design, and the design sprint.
• Module 8: Agile Product Development . Explore the principles of Agile development, Agile methodologies (Scrum, Kanban, etc.), Scrum/Agile team structures, and Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe 5.0), and learn about transitioning to Agile.
• Module 9: Product Planning and Roadmapping . Link business strategy to product development using roadmaps and product portfolio management, and learn how to use road mapping tools.
• Module 10: Product Prototyping . Discover the importance of prototyping, and learn about rapid prototyping, prototyping classifications (Alpha, Beta, Pilot), prototyping artifacts, wireframing, 3D printing, and prototyping best practices.
• Module 11: Taking Products to Market . Get an overview of the product launch and Go-to-Market strategy (GTM), elements of GTM strategy, product positioning and messaging, and product-launch planning.
• Module 12: Business Communication for Product Managers. Receive an overview of internal and external communication, discover the fundamentals of storytelling, and learn to give effective product presentations and demos. Additionally, identify the hidden benefits of impactful written communications, and learn how to run efficient meetings and deal with difficult situations.
• Module 13: Managing the Partner Ecosystem . Address the definition and creation of the "whole offer"— the Make, Buy or Ally decisions. Manage strategic partnerships and strategies for ecosystem development and growth.
• Module 14: Managing Product Evolution and Growth . Discover how a company might grow product sales through customer development, market development, and demand expansion. Learn how to manage product line extensions, product line pruning, and product sunsetting.
• Module 15: Growth Hacking. Learn how to develop the growth-hacker mindset, and explore growth-hacking skills, strategies, processes, and best practices.
• Module 16: Data Science and Analytics for Product Managers. Gain an overview of model evaluation metrics and ways of identifying biases to avoid analytical errors. Explore ways to leverage popular platforms and tools, such as Google Analytics.
• Module 17: AI and ML for Product Managers. Learn the definitions and fundamentals of analytics and artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) along with AI/ML platforms, tools, and types of analytics—descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive.
• Module 18: Managing Stakeholder Relationships. Learn how to manage different relationships as a product manager. Specifically, this module will address relationships between the product manager and the engineering team, sales organizations, customers, and executive leadership.
• Module 19: Product Management for Services Companies. Learn about the scalability of products versus services. Discover the development process for services and how it differs from that of products.
• Module 20: Capstone Project. In this final module, you will complete and submit the capstone project.