Friday Fall 2024

Up-level your PM career by shifting your thinking from outputs to outcomes and ship features that deliver results for your company.

Jon Harmer

Product Management Leader

Driving Business Impact for PMs

Microsoft

ServiceNow

Google

Electronic Arts

Intel

Product teams often get stuck focusing on outputs and predictable delivery (what and when am I building a thing) instead of outcomes (what will change as a result of building this thing). This leaves out the critical element of making sure you are building the right (most impactful) things in the right way. Jon's has 25+ years of experience in technology companies from CNN to Google, and has created this course to provide you with a comprehensive set of tools to help you develop impactful products by shifting from output-based thinking to outcome-based thinking. You will deepen your understanding of your customers and their needs as well as identifying and de-risking the different kinds of hypotheses built into your roadmap. You will also work to understand how your work contributes to your company's strategy. You will learn and apply frameworks to ensure your features solve user problems that drive business impact which connects all the way up to your company's goals. We will also help you develop successful products by understanding customer needs, identifying opportunities, managing risks, and creating value for customers. Using a combination of lectures, interactive hands-on exercises, and case studies from Airbnb, Dropbox, Zappos, and more, the course will focus on practical application and provide you with the skills and knowledge necessary to level up and apply these tools in real-world product management scenarios.

Move from feature factory to customer outcomes and drive impact in your business

You're a senior product manager who wants to delivering outstanding impact and business value to your users and your business.

You're an early career PM and want to level up your career and understand how to deliver business impact.

You're a startup founder who wants to validate ideas and develop products that meet customer needs and create value for them and your biz.

Who this course is for:

What you’ll get out of this course

You will learn how to identify the most impactful opportunities using Impact Mapping and other framing techniques and shift from output orientation ("what are we building?") to outcome/impact orientation ("what will change as a result of building these things?")

Learn how to prioritize the most impactful opportunities to move the needle for your business

You will learn how to better understand users and the problem space they are working in through Journey Maps that are customized for Product Managers

Grow your user empathy and customer discovery skills

By making explicit the different hypotheses in your plan and identifying the riskiest ones, you will be able to quickly validate the riskiest assumptions and improve your outcomes.

Understand the risks and hypotheses built into your roadmap

By working through user outcomes and how they drive business outcomes, you will be able to clearly tie your features to user behavior that drives business results.

Understand how your features tie in to the company goals

The course is designed to provide you with practical experience applying these tools to real-world product management scenarios. You will build actual journey and impact maps for your actual users &amp; products.

Create real-world deliverables for YOUR PRODUCTS

You will benefit from an instructor who has seen product management done well and poorly in his career as a product leader and consultant. Learn best practices and traps to avoid from companies like Google, CNN, Ford, and numerous startups and midsize companies.

Learn from an industry expert with 25+ years of experience

By developing these skills, you can enhance your PM career prospects and become a more valuable member of your product teams.

Boost your career

Learn with and from our community of product leaders from companies like Google, Microsoft, Electronic Arts, and ServiceNow both in the course and in our community Slack channel for class alumni.

Become a part of a community of impactful product leaders

Inside-out thinking is where you focus on what you are doing to your product. Outside-in thinking is where you focus on the outcomes that your product can achieve for your users.We'll explore the benefits of outside-in outside-in thinking and how to apply it to your job. We'll also discuss common traps to avoid and provide tips for success.

Outside-In vs Inside-Out thinking

Customer journey maps are a visual representation of the user's entire experience while trying to solve the problem your product addresses. In this module, you will learn how to create customer journey maps, identify pain points, and improve user experience, and end up with a first draft of a customer journey map for your product.

Customer Journey Mapping

The Confidence/Risk Matrix is a tool for managing risk and uncertainty in product development. In this module, you will learn how to create a Confidence/Risk Matrix, understand the difference between MVP and RAT, and make informed decisions that balance risk and reward so you can "build to learn" or "build to earn"

Confidence/Risk Matrix

Impact maps are a powerful tool for product managers to align product development with business goals and outcomes. You will create an impact map and review with your peers. Then we'll workshop so you can prioritize your efforts for maximum impact to the business and your career.

Impact Mapping

Course syllabus

Meet your instructor

Four two-hour live sessions where you will learn with a group of peers via framework overviews, case studies, group discussions and live instructor feedback.

Live Sessions

Key Exercises:<ul><li>Creating your own Customer Journey Map</li><li>Creating an Impact Map</li><li>Developing your Hypotheses</li><li>Quantifying your Impact Map</li><li>Assigning Risk to your Impact Map</li></ul>

Projects & Exercises

Course Structure

Vice President, Technology and Solutions Development, Managed Care of North America (A United Health Group Company)

Group Product Manager, YML; former PM@ Life360, LogMeIn, GoToMeeting 

What people are saying

This course builds on live workshops and hands-on projects

Active hands-on learning

You’ll be interacting with other learners through breakout rooms and live workshops

Interactive 

Join a community of like-minded people who want to learn and grow alongside you

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About this course

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