10 Best Product Management Certifications & Courses Online [Updated June 2023]

 

The first thing to notice about this course is its instructor, Charles Du who carries immense product management experience across companies like NASA, Apple and Ticketmaster. He has taught product management course at Ivy League colleges like Stanford and UCLA. So one can be rest assured that whatever would be taught would be brilliant. Now let’s take a look at what gets taught in this online product management course.

 

Learners will go through the entire process of product management from ideation to market research to wireframing to prototyping. They will get an opportunity to work hands-on tools like Pivotal Tracker, Axure, and Popplet. In-fact the course also help learners will build portfolio with 10 step-by-step exercises. And not to forget, one would also lay his/her hands on case studies like NASA app and Getaround.

 

Key USPs

 

• Comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• Lifetime Access to learning resources
• Access on laptop as well as mobile
• With 87 lectures, 16 downloadable resources, the course is great for anyone who wants to start in product management domain. Besides there are no prerequisites required to take up the course.
• Is self paced so learning could happen at your own convenience.

 

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This course is about becoming a more strategic product manager and is ideal for those who are working with engineers and have prior product management experience of 0-5 years. Learners will understand how to manage the entire product lifecycle to deliver products that deliver exceptional user experience and hence value.

 

And since this product management course makes you a more strategic product manager, the curriculum also starts with market intelligence i.e. profiling, market analysis, customer analysis, positioning etc. Under this module, learners also understand models like Kano Model.

 

Once the market intelligence module is over, then learners go through modules on strategy, new product development and Lifecycle Management where different aspects of product management are taught to them.

 

Key USPs

• More than 30K students already enrolled with an average rating of 4.5 (over 2.5K students)
• With 63 lectures and 43 downloadable resources and 21 articles, this is the perfect product management course for those who work closely with engineers and want to make a transition to product management.
• The instructor uses great examples to drive home a concept
• Comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• Lifetime access to resources and is highly affordable

 

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This is one of those online product management courses that start off literally from scratch i.e. it will explain the role of a product manager in different kinds of companies, how to identify users pain points, how to interview them to come up with potential solutions etc.

 

Developed by Cole Mercer and Evan Kimbrell, who have built products that engage 100 Million+ monthly users, this offering on Udemy has got more than 75K enrolments so far with an average rating of 4.5+. Students will learn the following under this product management course -

 

• Understand product lifecycle and how it applies to different products
• How to conduct customer interviews in order to understand their pain points
• Learn how to work with Balsamiq to create wireframes
• Learn AARRR framework and how it gets applied to a product
• Understand difference between development models like waterfall and agile
• Learn HEART framework
• Understanding technical concepts like SQL, front end development, back-end development etc.
• Ace product manager interview

 

Key USPs

 

• With 144 lecture videos and 121 downloadable resources, this is one of the most exhaustive online product management courses for beginners.
• Since it is hosted on Udemy, it comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee
• The course is neatly divided into different modules that takes a learner from basics of product management to advanced concepts.

 

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The course structure of this digital product management course is markedly different from others that are on this list. While other product management courses focus more on the actual product management lifecycle related concepts, this particular offering from University of Virginia (Darden School faculty) devotes greater time on softer aspects like taking all the stakeholders together and prioritizing tasks.

 

And truth be told, the most difficult aspect of being an effective product manager is stakeholder management and prioritizing tasks. Therefore even though this course doesn’t delve into product lifecycle too much, it merits a place on the best online product management courses available.

 

Spread over 4 weeks of study with 3-4 hours of effort per week, the different modules are -

 

1. Achieving focus and #winning
2. Using today’s product management methods
3. Exploring a new product idea
4. Amplifying an existing product

 

Key USPs

 

• Instructor Alex Cowen is a faculty at the Darden School of Business
• It is FREE to enrol
• Course is available in Chinese
• Looks at softer aspects (yet more difficult) of product management more carefully.

 

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Ideally this course should not have on the list of best product management courses but yet it is here; and it is because of a very simple reason that it prepares your soft launch in product management. This course clearly says that it prepares you for your first job as a product manager and therefore deals with simple stuff like - Is Product Management right for you? What are the lingo used by product managers? What are common interview questions?

 

So if you are looking for some hard hitting product management concepts and practical experience then it would not be a good choice but if you want to get a feel of product management first up and then commit 100% then this should definitely be your launch pad. Even the student reviews tell the same story.

 

Key USPs

 

• Helps learners ease into the area of product management. There is no burden of learning some hard skills
• Real interviews with product managers in reputed companies that help firm up the mind before committing 100%
• Comes with a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee

 

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This course is built by Cole Mercer, who has worked and scaled online businesses with 100s of millions of monthly active users. Coincidently he is also one of the instructors in one of the above product management courses.

 

Neatly divided into 15 learning modules, the course provides 360 degree view of product management to learner. It starts off with basics like what product manager do, difference between project management and product management, different types of product development models etc and takes the learner to advanced concepts like wireframing, creating MVP (minimum viable product) for a product, experimentation, KPI etcs.

 

The course also covers resume building, acing interview questions and real interviews of successful product managers.

 

Key USPs

 

• First Month Free (since the duration of the course is only 10.5 hours, you could complete the course FREE)
• The course has built a decent following in a short span of time
• Nice mix of theory and practical

 

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So the first thing one would notice about this product management certification is that it is catered towards software development and not digital consumer product. Therefore pick this one only when you want to get into managing software projects.

 

Learners will master AGILE software methodology to interact with clients and get the work done from developers. This offering from University of Alberta comprises of 6 courses -

 

1. Introduction to Software Product Management
2. Software Processes & Agile Practices
3. Client Needs & Software Requirements
4. Agile Planning for Software Products
5. Reviews & Metrics for Software Improvements
6. Software Product Management Capstone

 

Key USPs

 

• It goes in depth about teaching agile practices and then deploying those to ensure success in software development.
• The instructor Kenny Wong comes with rich teaching experience
• Free to Enrol
• Software Product Management Capstone Project at the end of the course
• Duration: 4 months with 8 hours/week of effort thereby making the course a rigorous one

 

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Coming from the stable of Kellogg School of Management, this product management certification is about product strategy i.e it takes a strategic perspective of product. And it is because of this reason that a varied industry professionals opt for this certification. As per the program brochure, only 52% of the enrolments belong to IT domain, the rest are from healthcare, industrial goods, banking etc.

 

Key takeaways of the program are (taken verbatim from the program brochure) -

 

• Analyze new product opportunities to arrive at ‘go’ or ‘no-go’ conclusions efficiently
• Assess the pros and cons of various business models including SaaS and pivot to another business model when your current one isn’t delivering growth
• Develop a go-to-market strategy using the 7-Elements Framework
• Create buyer personas, positioning, and messaging based on proprietary tools from the Kellogg School of Management
• Learn from real-world custom case studies and examples based on the faculty’s own consulting experience with top tech firms such as Microsoft, AT&T, Salesforce.com, and Facebook
• Create agile requirements grounded in the ‘jobs-to-be-done’ framework, user stories, and epics
• Manage partner ecosystems and learn how to create win-win partnerships

 

One thing remarkable different in this course is that the instructor - Professor Mohanbir Sawhney shares a lot of his consulting experience during the class that gives students a flair of real world.

 

Key USPs

 

• Great faculty in the form of Professor Mohanbir Sawhney whose consulting clients list would cover 2 pages
• The certification comes with the brand name of Kelloggs
• Since the certification is about product strategy, the learning is transportable to any domain
• Duration: 2 Months with 4-6 hours of weekly effort

 

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If you are still with us till now, then you would probably be thinking why we have not included Certified Product Manager Program by AIPMM (Association of International Product Marketing and Management) on the list. After all it is the gold standard in product management certification.

 

So in our defence, the answer is that it is a mere certification and for someone to clear it, a structured course is required. And it is here where 280Group’s Certified Product Manager Program comes into the picture. Spread across 18 learning modules and coupled with lots of quizzes and interactive exercises, this course prepares you well for the AIPMM certification.

 

Key USPs

 

• Prepares you to take Certified Product Manager Program by AIPMM
• 3 program options to choose from with financing options
• Dedicated modules for AIPMM certification

 

We hope that this list of the best product management certification and courses prove beneficial to you and it helps you further your career.

 

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Like any micromasters program on Edx, this product management certification is an extensive and rigorous one from Boston University and takes the learner deep into product management process through its neatly designed 5 courses.

 

1. Product Management with Lean, Agile and System Design Thinking
2. Platform Strategy for Business
3. Strategic Social Media Marketing
4. Driving Digital Innovation Through Experimentation
5. Business Analytics for Data Driven Decision Making

 

Through the course of this product management certification, students will learn about different product workflows, validating MVPs of product, creating go-to-market strategy, how digital platforms work, launch platforms, build effective social media marketing strategy, how to carry out experimentation to drive growth, and how to measure data to drive business decisions.

 

It is undoubtedly one of the most exhaustive online product management certifications out there. 

 

Key USPs

 

• Students who would have done this Micromasters program would be credited with 8 academic units if they decide to go for masters degree from Boston University
• Eclectic set of faculty
• Individual Courses are free to complete. Certification is chargeable.
• Duration: 6-8 weeks per course with 4-8 hours per week per course of effort

 

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