Udemy course review: Become a Product Manager | Learn the Skills & Get the Job + Activity solutions

Disclaimer: All the stories I share are my own hypothesis. I do not intend to harm or object any person, product, job, or community; intentionally or otherwise. Hope you enjoy a good read!

I recently finished this Udemy course on Product Management. A lot of my connections on LinkedIn and colleagues were spending their time earning certifications, so I thought, might as well join the herd. This blog post will dig deeper into the course, who is it suitable for, important learnings and some resources I found missing in the course.
I have a bonus section for the PM enthusiasts which contains the solutions to the activities I stumbled upon during the course (which most of us usually skip). Stick with me and let’s get started.

About the instructors

Cole Mercer and Evan Kimbrell are the instructors for this course and they are at the top of their respective fields.
Cole covers most of Product Management core stuff like product development, metrics, gathering ideas and requirements, working with people, project management and how to get the job in PM. Cole has a lot of PM experience and worked as a Senior Product Manager at SoundCloud.
Evan, on the other hand, covers topics like building MVP, competitor analysis, customer development etc. Evan hasn’t worked technically as a Product Manager but is a co-founder of 2 successful startups so he very well knows what he’s talking about.

About the course

The course pretty much covers everything a PM must know. There’s a lot of theoretical knowledge in the course to help you cope up with the jargon of PM. After completing the course, you will have a very good idea of what a typical day in the life of a PM looks like. The course will take you through the journey of Product Management in a chronological manner (in 4 phases):

a) Introduction: Starting from the basics of Product Management, roles and responsibilities of a Product Manager, product development lifecycle, and requirements gathering.
b) Experiments, analysis and visualize: Competitor analysis, talking with customers and running customer interviews, designing and running experiments (MVP), and a brief introduction on conceptualizing your solutions using wireframes, mockups and prototypes.
c) Technical aspects of PM: Collecting and using KPIs (metrics), project management, understanding the technology behind products, and working with people.
d) Getting a job in PM: Preparing for job interviews, job hunt, answering interview questions, and things to do after you got the job.

My honest and unbiased review
I feel that the course is best-suited and serves as a good entry point for people who want to transition into Product Management for real. For developers looking to shift in PM, it’s the best course to help you understand your users and finally get an answer to why your PM asked you to put that button on the top-right instead at the bottom. ;)
The best thing I encountered in the course was the activities associated with a few sections. These activities make you work on real-world case studies so you actually perform a function of a Product Manager on real products. Keep reading to find the link to the activities and my solutions.
There’s a whole section on technology for product managers and I thought I would skip it because, duh, I’ve been working as a full-stack developer for over 2+ years but I’m glad I didn’t because the way he explained client, server, APIs, front-end and back-end was remarkable.
This course seems perfect but there are a few down-sides to it, in my opinion.
1. There is no way for you to get your activity reviewed. No matter how good you thought you did in the activity, there is no way to get feedback from the instructors except fellow learners.
2. I thought Cole would dig deeper in the PM interviews where he would take on the questions that are normally asked during the interviews like the guesstimates, case studies, what’s your favourite product, how would you improve an existing product etc.
3. There is no mention of other resources that can help one prepare for job interviews like Cracking the PM Interview, Divide and Conquer, The Design of Everyday Things and some other books a PM should read because experience, failure and reading, that’s how we grow homie.

TL;DR

If you are bored with your routine and tired of doing the same tasks every day but love to deal with people and solve problems for yourself and others, go ahead, take this course. There is so much for you to learn. You might wanna reconsider taking this course if you are already working in a product team (analyst, APM etc.), but there is no harm in learning from others, and that too just for ₹360.

Hope you enjoyed reading the article and got a glimpse (actually more than just glimpse) of the course. Let me know in comments if you have taken this course and what did/did not you like.

Also, here are the activities and my solutions to it:

1. [ACTIVITY] The Big, Bloated, Blue Bird — Forms: https://tinyurl.com/y2h6u3yl
2. [ACTIVITY] Separating the Signal from the Noise: https://tinyurl.com/yxmv52so
3. [ACTIVITY] Wunderlist and Their Not-So-Wunderful Dilemma: https://tinyurl.com/y3c9ah8l
4. [ACTIVITY] Oculus Rift Between Your Friends: https://tinyurl.com/y4l8y95x
5. [ACTIVITY] Putting the GO in Pokemon Go: https://tinyurl.com/y3anxeux