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University System of Maryland

Modern Product Leadership

University System of Maryland and University of Maryland, College Park via edX

Overview

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Product Managers are masters at internal sales, team building, delegation, and empowerment. They also know that great product management careers are not built alone. From envisioning a product strategy to correctly portraying the product roadmap, the process must be inclusive, interactive, and motivating with modern leadership techniques. As your products grow, you’ll also need to skills to manage teams of teams. This course will enable you to align product teams, product designs, and product development for speed and innovation at scale.

Product Managers have one of the toughest, most demanding positions in the modern product organization. They must be both visionaries and evangelists, as well as facilitators and coaches. Often they must communicate clearly and effectively across a wide range of audiences. To do this well means being the expert in a number of key competencies of leadership.

Modern leadership principles emphasize empowerment and ownership. Meanwhile products require teams to work together at scale. This course will starts by resetting on what is good leadership based on actual data and studies. Not half-proven theories or intuition. Drawing on actual research and met studies we’ll cover the key elements of what makes a good product leader based on work by Jim Collins John Maxwell, Peter Northouse, Melissa Perri, and more. One of the key findings is that a leader’s success is driven by their team, and how well that team aligns with the mission. Understanding this, we’ll show you how to maximize the team’s effect on the leader and vice versa.

Next we’ll dive into how to build the team. This is essential if you want to move the culture and practices of your organization to truly thrive. We’ll also go over principles of encouraging ownership and continuously replenish your leadership pipeline.

In the third week, we’ll look at the core influential competencies of a product evangelist. This means vision setting, roadmapping problems, setting goals and objectives, demoing effectively and more. We’ll also discuss the art of negotiating across departments and interests, and how to manage conflicts to resolution quickly through good leadership and problem solving.

Finally we’ll turn to frameworks for organizing teams at multiple scales of product development. Whether an aspiring product manager or Head of Product, this will enable better understanding of how leaders align teams. Starting with basic Agile processes we’ll move on to scaling techniques for integrating hardware and software teams of teams. We’ll also discuss how to deploy influence and guide the work with discovery frameworks and techniques at scale. Understanding core processes and trade-offs at scale is critical to leading products to success.

Syllabus

Module 1: Modern Leadership for Product Organizations

Module 2: Building and Motivating the Product Team

Module 3: Influencing Product Stakeholders for Greater Outcomes

Module 4: Organizing Product Discovery and Delivery for Speed at Scale

Taught by

John Johnson

Reviews

4.7 rating, based on 128 Class Central reviews

4.2 rating at edX based on 13 ratings

Start your review of Modern Product Leadership

  • This is the last course of the Certificate Program in Product Management. Modern Product Leadership is an excellent guideline to lead product teams that want to have the resolve to achieve great results. I studied the nature of product organizations, how to build product teams, how to engage in negotiations, and how to win as a product leader. Now I feel equipped with the required skills to build a winning startup. I won't stop learning.
  • Anonymous
    UMCP’s Modern Product Leadership course is ideal for aspiring PMs aiming for Head of Product roles. It equips you with step-by-step tools to build or enhance a startup product team. Additionally, it offers a crash course in leadership and management akin to B-school. The course covers a historical overview of leadership, aiding in addressing contemporary challenges.
  • Anonymous
    It's very interesting the analysis they do to uncover the principles of nowadays leadership, really useful and mind-changing. However, I don't give it a 5 stars as when talking about discovery and delivery practices it's not teaching true product management, it's mostly project management. It also provides some good book references as "Inspired" by Marty Cagan, but at the same time named a few times SAFe as it were a good practice, which is totally opposite to was is told on that book and good product practices. I think this is really critical as it can misinform. I don't give it a 3 stars as the rest of the content is valuable enough for the price considering the certification.
  • Anonymous
    The instructor was difficult to understand and some of the statements did not make sense. I have been working in this industry for over 20 years and I had to read the text after listening to the video multiple times to understand what the instructor was stating. The grammar was so off. Even simple concepts that we use in everyday tasks like user stories were so badly explained here. Most of the statements were grammatically hard to make sense. Here is an example:

    Then teams can product teams can elaborate and product increments based on stories.

    What is the meaning of the above statement?
  • Anonymous
    This course was a fantastic refresher for my knowledge on project management, while also providing valuable insights into the world of product management. The course was well-structured and engaging, with informative videos and helpful resources to support my learning. I particularly appreciated the practical applications of the concepts taught, which allowed me to apply the knowledge to real-world scenarios. The instructors were knowledgeable and passionate, and their enthusiasm for the subject matter was infectious. Overall, I highly recommend this course to anyone looking to improve their project management skills and gain a solid foundation in product management.
  • Anonymous
    This was such a great course with tons of valuable references and real-life scenarios. I have taken other courses from Maryland on EdX in the past and the clarity, directness, and applicability of the content came through once more.

    I would definitely recommend this course or any other by the University System of Maryland, especially if you are a working professional and looking to quickly apply your learning on a regular basis.
  • Anonymous
    The "Modern Product Leadership" course was excellent, providing in-depth explanations on key topics. The real-life examples made the concepts easier to grasp and highly applicable. Each lesson was well-structured and insightful, giving a practical understanding of product leadership challenges. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to deepen their skills and knowledge in modern product management and leadership.
  • Profile image for Monika Kostrzewa
    Monika Kostrzewa
    The course was part of the Product Management Program, it was very good prepared course, everything in nutshell. It awakes my interest in Agile Management and Data Science, waht I consider to do with the this teacher. Sometimes I had difficulties to understand the theory but the example presented clarified everything. Inthe free time I will go back to references and dive in the topic :)
  • Anonymous
    The Modern Product Leadership course provided insightful and practical content to apply in my role as a product manager. The flow of content and user experience is simple. Although John's courses were the most challenging of all the program courses, I found it useful because it required me not only take thoughtful notes but to give my notes a second pass during quizzes.
  • Anonymous
    The Product Management class was great. The content covered was insightful, interesting, and engaging, with very knowledgeable instructors. I'm very excited to participate further in the course and explore the practical applications of product management concepts. Thank you for providing such a valuable learning experience for me!

  • Anonymous
    Comprehensive and brought together concepts, approach and principles from the other courses in the Product Management Certificate program. Nice blend of hard and soft skills that for me resonated with daily reality. There are actionable nuggets yet also provides sufficient theory and references to keep learning.
  • Anonymous
    Some of the concepts are outdated. It's not a truly "digital" product management course. Some of the courses are focused on very outdated concepts and examples. The course is also more project management focused vs. product management. I would highly recommend the course owners to update / revise the course "Product Design, Prototyping, and Testing". This course is just lectures with unhelpful examples. I could take something away from most classes but, this one was truly not connecting for me.

    I like how some courses had written notes and follow-up quizzes because it reinforced what you learned. I also enjoyed the fundamentals course. The instructor is really easy to follow and understand.
  • Anonymous
    This was probably my favorite chorus in the product management certificate program. I loved the graphics and the real world examples and the way things were defined from a product management perspective. It helped validate what I already know, and put it into more technical terms.
  • Anonymous
    This course gives a blended view of Agile, Lean, SAFe project management methodologies in the context of 'product management'. Provides a guide for building and leading teams.
  • Anonymous
    Great, quality content well condensed and explained in bite-size chunks easy to fit into your routine. Excellent insights into leadership and handling the product lifecycle.
  • Anonymous
    great course . I really enjoyed learning all about how to further my career as a product manager and think this course was useful in helping do so for me.
  • Anonymous
    Great class. Great job synthesizing topics across leadership, product, and project management. Fantastic content, materials, and reference guides.
  • Anonymous
    Great course combining the basics of leadership and how they apply to the contemporary filed of product development and product management!
  • Anonymous
    Professionally prepared course - no water, just the essence of what you have to know to be effective as a product manager. Love it.
  • Anonymous
    This is a well rounded course that offers a comprehensive range of theories, frameworks supported by real world examples.

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