DISCOVERY
SOLUTION ITERATION
BUILD
We learn by doing...
This class is ONLY available to HBS full time students.
Product Management 101 (PM 101) is designed for students who are seeking Product Management careers in startups or larger technology firms. This course would also be relevant for anyone looking to understand the science behind Product Management in a leadership role. This course is appropriate for students with no product management experience to entry level product management experience. The focus is on B2B or B2C digital products, however many of the concepts covered can be applied to non-digital product roles.
This course will take the perspective of a product manager or product executive inside an organization leading the vision and development of a software product. We’ll cover software product lifecycles, including starting new products and expanding existing products. The skills learned in this course will be applicable to a wide array of product management scenarios, agnostic of industry. Some of the topics we’ll cover include setting product strategies and visions, understanding your customer needs, experimenting to validate ideas, working with developers and designers, and developing Minimum Viable Products.
The course was originally designed by Professor Thomas Eisenmann and Prem Ramaswami for students who lack prior product management experience and who either wish to work in that role after graduation in a big tech company, in a startup or for aspiring founders who want to gain a better understanding of the product development process. This course is being updated by Melissa Perri to include case discussions and projects for the 2021-2022 school year.