Product management, one of the rising areas of today’s business world, is an exciting and stressful responsibility with its busy pace and demanding talent requirements.
Product managers, therefore, should be well-equipped with useful skills in managing products and knowledge to become successful wherever they land.
And as a grinding PM or PM-to-be, you know that obtaining these skills and knowledge is not easy.
Finding the right resources tailored to your needs is a time-consuming activity. So to help you, I have gathered the best free and paid product management courses taught by senior product managers and available for anyone interested. Let’s take a look:
Best Paid Product Management Courses
1- Product Management Course by Product School
Product Management Course by Product School is offered on campus in 20 cities around the world with a choice of taking the classes completely online.
The course provides the participants with a rich syllabus, and all the classes are instructed by successful product managers from big tech companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Spotify, UBER, Tesla, Netflix, and LinkedIn. The content of the program includes a two-month course that includes every aspect of product management and access to valuable services the Product School offers even after the course is finished.
- Price: $3999
- Duration: 8 weeks
- Online Live or in-class
2- Product Toolkit by Product Lessons
Product Toolkit focuses on real examples and proven templates to help people do great product management work.
It covers 70 lessons, 65 examples, and 27 templates across many topics, from running brainstorms to setting goals, scoping products, leading meetings, and negotiating. The Toolkit was made by the founder of Product Lessons, Linda Zhang, who was previously a Group PM at Faire and turned down a Senior PM offer from Instagram.
- Price: $179
- Duration: 3 weeks
- Online, lifetime access
3- “Five Steps to Build a Most Lovable Product” by Stanford Continuing Studies
Taught by Jin Zhang, an Engineering Director at Meta (formerly Facebook), this course is unbelievably well-received and practical for every product manager out there.
While there are many more useful, mostly asynchronous online courses available, there are also some very effective online classes. These are like real-life classes where you actively listen to the lectures told by your Instructor, discuss with your classmates, work on projects and presentations, attend workshops by Industry Professionals, and even get a letter grade 🙂
One of the best among these online Product Management Classes is the one being prepared and instructed at Stanford Continuing Studies.
The program accepts applications worldwide and participants consist of Product People coming from different backgrounds and different levels of expertise. The name of this famous course is “Five Steps to Build a Most Lovable Product: Why MVP Is No Longer Enough”.
During the course, you get the chance to understand the MVP approach in detail and start developing a new framework that is way more comprehensive in terms of the users (the people) and their needs.
The MLP approach (Most Lovable Product) helps you learn where to concentrate while you are working on a new product or a new feature that aims to solve a well-defined problem of a well-defined group of people.
Being able to work with a classroom full of students coming from different backgrounds is a great way to obtain new perspectives in your journey to becoming a successful product manager, and the team project is a great opportunity to evaluate and apply what you have learned during the course.
As a product person looking for quality investments that will help you advance your career, the Most Lovable Product Class is one of the best courses that you can attend.
For now, there isn’t much information on a specific landing page as to how you can apply to this course, but Jin Zhang regularly shares information and developments about the course on her LinkedIn so you can connect with her and ask for more information.
4- Introduction to Product Management by Cognitir
Cognitir’s course solves the classic chicken and egg problem in product management recruiting:
The problem is companies want to hire experienced product managers, and aspiring product managers need experience to be hired.
How does Cognitir’s course solve this problem? 🤔
Because students build actual products in the course which can be showcased to potential employers to help win PM interviews.
Going beyond theory and providing the course attendees with practice and actual products they’ve created is an innovative and much-needed approach to digital education.
The course excellently balances hands-on exercises with lectures to teach fundamental product management concepts in a short amount of time.
And, in my opinion, compared to the courses that offer similar content and value, Cognitir’s course has a huge ROI with $49/month and unlimited access to all content related to product management and all the practices.
- Price: $49/month
- Duration: ~12 hours
- Online
5- Product Management First Steps by LinkedIn Learning
This course within the LinkedIn Learning system offered by LinkedIn, a popular business networking website, is provided by the former Principal Product Manager of Adobe.
The course includes the six-stage process from the initial period of a product to the launch of the product. It is a useful course to provide a strong basis for product management, but a basis is all this course will establish for you.
- Price: $29.99
- Duration: 1 hour and 51 minutes
- Online
6- Online Product Management Course by General Assembly
This course by the General Assembly has one purpose:
Getting you ready to be a real product manager.
It covers a lot of ground and claims to provide you with the skills and knowledge necessary to bring your products and features to success.
Although the price might be scary at first, for serious product managers looking to get educated by a product expert, this course is a must and definitely returns the investment.
- Price: $3950, divided payments available
- Duration: Long, varies
- Online
7- UX Design for Product Managers and Fundamentals of Product Management by Stanford University
These courses offered by Stanford, a highly renowned university, are competent to provide a foundation for almost every aspect of product management. Courses are offered by professional product managers, and their aim is to strengthen the knowledge by providing an interactive environment with trainers and other students.
- Price: $605
- Duration: 10 weeks
- In-class
8- Become a Product Manager – Learn the Skills and Get the Job on Udemy
Become a Product Manager is especially suitable for beginners with 16 hours of the best content you can find.
This course available on Udemy is an online training that provides knowledge on the role of a product manager in different companies operating in different industries is and how to manage products according to product groups and product development processes.
- Price: €194.99
- Duration: 10 weeks
- Online
9- Product Management A-Z: Excel as a PM & Build Great Products on Udemy
This online course, also available on Udemy, provides product management training through the existing examples, allowing participants to practice on one-to-one live samples. Once you are accepted into the course, you will have the opportunity to attend this course again throughout your life, which, with the value it offers, will be a source you will get back to every time you need guidance.
- Price: €24.99
- Duration: 5 weeks
- Online
10- Learn Product Management by One Month
This training course focuses on the product development process and shows all the details of the process to the participants.
It also provides training content on developing the skills that a product manager should have.
- Price: $199
- Duration: 4 weeks
- Online
11- Product Marketing Courses by Pragmatic Institute
The four-course Certified Product Manager track from Pragmatic Institute is the de facto standard in the product management world.
Pragmatic’s product management Framework lays out the essential activities product managers need to build products people want to buy. Each course focuses on a specific subset of the Framework and can be taken in any order after the Foundations course to meet your specific needs.
All of Pragmatic’s courses, including product management and product marketing courses, come with a certification that is sought over the world over.
Pragmatic has issued over 200,000 certifications worldwide, and their certifications have been named one of the 7 hottest certifications by CIO Magazine. Certification comes with access to Pragmatic’s award-winning alumni community, resources, mentoring, and more to help ensure success after completion.
- Price: $1195/course; 4 courses in Product Manager Certification track; 8 courses total
- Duration: 7 hours per course
- Live Online and on-demand
Best Free Product Management Courses
12- Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals by the University of Virginia on Coursera
Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals discusses why the old ways of product management are not viable anymore and explains the modern fundamentals of product management.
According to the course, the product manager of the digital era should be able to explore new ideas and design and manage products actively, and how one can do it is the full content of the course.
- Free
- Duration: 4 weeks
- Online
13- Product Design on Udacity
This free course by Udacity provides participants with information on how they can create a product out of an idea they have, and how they can design this product. With useful classes on UX/UI design, the course offers a valid foundation for everyone interested in product design.
- Free
- Duration: 8 weeks
- Online
Aside from these valuable courses that offer hours of training content on product management, you can listen to various podcasts about product management, marketing, growth, and start-ups. Check out our article 13 Best Podcasts About Startups and Growth.
14- Google’s APM Program
Although this should be counted as more of an internship opportunity than a course, it would provide more than enough information and real-life experience to surpass any course we’ve mentioned.
So Google’s Associate Product Manager Program is included here.
Google’s APM is a great full-time/internship opportunity for those new to product management. I believe it is definitely worth checking out for North American product people out there; it might be your lucky day!
Conclusion
Whether you aspire to be one of the best product managers in the world or just looking to land a PM job at a solid company, the road to success for both objectives go through self-improvement.
Wondering what’s next for a PM-to-be? Here are the best tools a product manager can and SHOULD use.
If you like this article, you can also read Product Marketing vs. Product Management.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is product management?
Product management refers to designing and building products while organizing the teams that contribute to this process.
How can I become a product manager?
Product management requires lots of different skills. Going through a quality product management course will help you achieve these and become a PM.
What skills are required for product management?
Business and economics competencies, analytical, organizational, time management, and prioritization skills are essential for a product manager.
