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Learner Reviews & Feedback for The Business of Product Management I by Advancing Women in Tech

4.5
stars
745 ratings

About the Course

Learn to excel in product management roles while learning directly from industry-leading product managers and real-world case studies from Amazon, Intuit, Procter and Gamble, Barnes and Noble, Whole Foods, Google, Twitter, Tesla, Dropbox, Eventbrite, Blue, Samson, Coffee Meets Bagel, Mixpanel, and more! Featuring expert product manager instructors including: * NANCY WANG, Head of Data Protection Services, Amazon Web Services; Founder and CEO, Advancing Women in Product * WAYNE DUSO, Vice President for Edge Computing, File Services, and Data Services, Amazon Web Services * ARUM KANG, Co-Founder & CEO, Coffee Meets Bagel * AMIR MOVAFAGHI, CEO, Mixpanel; former Global Head of Business of Operations, Twitter. Sponsored by AMAZON WEB SERVICES (AWS). This is the first of four courses in the ACE Recommended Real-World Product Management Specialization. When you complete all four courses, you can earn up to 6 college credits....

Top reviews

RR

Dec 2, 2020

Fantastic course. I really enjoyed the interviews with industry experts. They were extremely insightful. The exercises and assignments were super useful and the templates made it easy to get started.

SS

Apr 4, 2021

I really enjoyed this course because it was a good balance between the lectures and assignments. Doing the assignments not only helped me increase my confidence but also helped me expand my thinking.

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276 - 300 of 406 Reviews for The Business of Product Management I

By Behrang M M

•

May 19, 2023

The Course itself is great with many great topics. I thought have comments about the quizzes and assignments.

1. Assignments were great, they all pushed me to do some hand-on work and helped me learn, the very last one, "Competitive Analysis excel sample file, items columns B titles doesn't seems to match column C which are answers, as an examples, taget customers 13B, not showing anything other than a price screenshot in cell 13 C or D.

2. Quizzes: Quizzed in my opinion can be narrated more clear. Questions are not very straight forward and answers are too vague. Quizzed where somehow the discouraging part for me as they were taking so long time for me. I liked the random changes for every attempts but the answers were not consistent. Because some questions were too unclear, I had to take some quizzes more than 3 times, what surprised me was I noted down the wrongs answers to review them and next times I had to select different answers, finally the correct answer was the one which failed me at the first attempt and that double confused me, both the questions narratives, the answers and finally the wrong answer which became the right one. I appreciate if you rewrite the questions to be more clear, other than that the course was great and I like it generally. I didn't consider my review based on the quizzes at all. they were the one that a few times I decided to pass on the course and start a new one but I pushed myself to complete it regardless.

By Vanessa P

•

Jan 14, 2023

This course was very informative. The assignments were beneficial: structuring my product, creating a persona and roadmap, and learning how to manage market competition was good information for a beginner. The opportunity to keep the assignments for a portfolio is a plus.

One area of improvement for the course is the quizzes. At times, the questions appeared hard to understand. Particularly the Bar Raised Product Hunt PDR quiz. The true/false, clear/unclear structure of the questions was difficult to understand and answer, especially for someone with no design/engineering background. The Product Hunt example was my first time seeing what a "poorly done" or "rushed" PDR looks like. I took the quiz several times.

At times, the questions felt like trick questions. I got questions wrong because I was supposed to select more than one answer. Some of the questions indicated selecting all that applied and some questions did not. I had to find out on my own after getting them wrong. Addtionally, if I failed the quiz three times, I would have to wait 24-hours. It was nice that I could move on in the course; however, returning to attempt a quiz after 3, 6, or 9 times was an inconvenience.

Nonetheless, the interviews were so insightful. It was nice to hear what is expected from PMs from a CEO perspective.

Thank you! On to the next course!

By P M

•

Jun 14, 2023

Would be great to have some kind of a glossary or something for the terms mentioned. Nice delivery, I liked the instructor despite her manner of speaking and presenting the material.

General feedback to quizzes in this course: the timer in every question is very confusing. Please look up how Google made their quizzes and correct the way you’re showing the timer. It can modestly be on top of the page.

please look up the 'PM an International Hotel Brand Quiz' (!). In question 7 there’s a clear typo when choosing the right answer. despite i answered correctly, per notes under the grade, it shows that the answer is incorrect. Same quiz and questions about the journey map attached in questions 9 and 10. Are you serious? The quality of the picture is horrible and you’re asking the questions on what’s written in the picture? After just takling how important it is to keep in mind impairments the customer can have?

Quiz 'Competitive analytics basics': how am I supposed to understand what my mistake is if I get this: ‘Error while evaluating gradeAnswer: Cannot read property 'correctAnswer' of undefined’. Seriously, please, review your quizzes.

By Syed M M G

•

Dec 23, 2021

I loved the content and direction. I would give it a 4.5 stars out of 5. The only think that it lacked was that I felt it was a little to brief forexample, PRDs (you could have added the different types and detail of PRD to show when to use which in what context), Competitive Analysis Doc (provide some proper case study that you had done prior to this instead of a brief summary which would have allowed everyone to understand in greater detail with more examples of each section), similarly all the other topics could have provided an actual example instead of a hypothetical example with a lot of brevity and simplicity. Showing actual real work detailed examples instead of smaller examples could improve the course immensely. Thank you for reading this. Also since I would have completed the entire courses and so I wont be able to view any changes that you make to this course afterwards, I was also hoping that any changes you make eg to temples and examples please could you open those for the Alumnis who have completed this course. Thank you in Advance! Have a nice day! Regards, Syed Gardezi

By D K

•

Jan 10, 2021

=== Material ===

Good material, on a fairly introductory level, though. I hope there will be more in-depth information in the part 2 of this course. Part of this was already familiar to me (coming from a UX background).

Next to the frameworks and tools I would also like to hear how to do them well. For example, in the competitive analysis framework - what to look for when identifying the 'how to win'. That is, of course, a separate topic worth hours of material, but some tips would be nice. Or extra reading, perhaps?

=== Choice of case study ===

I feel I would have benefited from a real case from my clients, but the peer-reviewed part makes it impossible for me. I am not allowed to just share information on the client work that I do, so I had to come up with an imaginary product.

I got stuck on it for quite a bit, it became an existential struggle :) Coming up with an imaginary product to work on was pretty hard for me.

=== General ===

Overall, decent course. Looking forward to part 2! This is a great initiative, thank you a lot!

By Brenna S

•

Nov 12, 2020

Nancy is great and is clearly knowledgeable and passionate about product management, which is exactly what you want in an instructor when learning a new topic for yourself. I learned a lot, but still left with a few questions unanswered. For example, at what point do each of the tasks reviewed come into play? It would be great to know, for example, if an incoming new PM is often expected to create a new competitive analysis, or is that usually grandfathered in? Are you creating a new competitive analysis with each new product, or feature? The customer personas seem loosely defined and not based on market data that has been gathered from vetted demographic information, yet some answers to the quizzes are suspiciously specific. It was never clear if you just make educated guesses on the demographics and stick to it, or if the information is actually coming from a reputable source. Perhaps these questions will be answered in the next installments of this specialization, but only time will tell!

By Harika J

•

Feb 11, 2024

The course content is good but there are a couple of things that could make this better. Pros: The quizzes and assignments were very good. They allowed me to actually step out of my comfort zone, get my hands dirty and try out things I had just learnt. The complexity level of the quizzes was high enough to get me thinking. I learnt a lot through the multiple attempts in the quizzes. The teach one, do one and learn one gave us enough diversity required to understand each concept. I liked the interviews as well. Cons: The instructor is not very engaging. It did not feel like teaching, it felt like reading out from a document which is something even the taker of the course could have done. I feel like there could have been more content to help us develop a product sense or approach. Maybe, what are the things you keep in mind when you are deciding a feature? The example of the visa card was really good but maybe more of such things to help us ask the right questions.

By Hannah K

•

Oct 18, 2022

I took this course to better understand if Product Management was a good fit for me! I really enjoyed the content & I learned a lot throughout the course in terms of terminology, strategy, and what the job would entail. I especially appreciated the interviews with industry professionals, they made me feel more secure in my mindset.

I also really enjoyed the exercises to create your own product materials, I thought these were a great learning tool and I found them really enjoyable as exercises.

Through the course I occassionally did become frustrated specifically at the quizes. The quizes some times have questions that could be interpreted in multiple ways or actually have answers that don't make sense. I tried not to take the grade aspect of the course too seriously because of this, but it was frustrating because I felt like I couldn't learn from what I got wrong on the quizzes in instances where there were no right answers or answers didn't make sense.

By Srividya V

•

Sep 16, 2022

Great introduction to customer persona, customer journey, PRDs, the very famous PRFAQs and Competitor Analysis. Some of the key takeaways for me were

"

So with empathy, put yourself in the shoes of a reader at their worst.

They're tired, hungry, overwhelmed with with everything else they have to read throughout their day.

So how do you write to them? "

and the point made by Coffee Meets Bagel about how it is important to observe customers because "context" in which the problems are met with or solved cannot be found in data.

Would suggest a few improvements -

1) Some of the learners simply copy the mock exercise from the template used in the exercise by Nancy Wang. There should be a way to rate these responses.

2) Somewhere during the course, it began to feel monotonous. If we could think of ways to break the monotony, it would be great.

By Jeni D

•

Oct 19, 2022

The actual content is varied and moves quickly with lots of different exercises to expand your practical application. My biggest suggestion would be to improve the quiz questions and work with a curriculum designer who can write better questions (for example, don't include double negatives to confuse students). The content was great, the quizzes were rough. I also think some of the more business-specific exercises could use more clarity and exposure - that might mean building out the videos a bit more or inlcuding more in depth reading before the quizzes. Again, the quiz questions sometimes even required outside research that was not previously taught in the course. But for someone beginning in this field, the class is a fast-track to understand the industry lingo and how to apply even advanced concepts of product management.

By Christopher T

•

Feb 19, 2021

The material covered in this course and the concepts one is exposed to is terrific: PRFAQs, TAM/SAM/SOM, interviews with CEOs and business leaders, and so on.

Straight talk: if you're interested in product management, this course is an excellent start and worth your time.

Two pieces of feedback for this course:

1) Production value: There are many, many jump cuts in the lectures and I'm not sure why given the otherwise excellent preparation that was done for the course.

2) Assignments are a bit of a mess since they seem to be peer graded. You may end up waiting numerous days for another peer to come along and grade your work, and you may be asked to grade another peer's work who simply gives you a Google Drive link with no permission to access it. Ultimately, the blame on this point may lie more with Coursea than the instructor.

By Claire W

•

Dec 29, 2022

This course was great to build confidence as a PM and understand the areas to put more focus on - e.g. working back from the PR and deeply understanding our customers through persona and journey mapping - and which areas I was already doing well in. The market sizing was useful and just what I needed to do for work!

The assignments were very, very useful.

What could be addressed more, early on, is the difference in the PM role at an early-stage startup vs. large companies like Amazon. Because a first-level PM at a startup has a broader remit (manages more than a feature), and also more time constraints so has to focus on prioritization.

I want to learn about roadmapping as well which is not covered in the course.

Thank you so much, Nancy and AWIT, for making this course available!

By Nadine K

•

Apr 28, 2021

Overall it was a very interesting course. The first 3 weeks go through the very basics inc personas, customer journeys, etc. the last week was packed with useful information that i didn't have before. I liked that the course challenged you with many practical exercises. In the beginning I thought "this is going to take for ever!" but once i got stuck into it I quickly enjoyed completing my own and reviewing my peers assignments. In the end the assignments and the expert interviews were the most useful parts of the course, the teaching videos were interesting and nice and short. Overall a great course. Only feedback would be to spread out the content a bit more. Week 4 felt jam packed compared to weeks 1-3... maybe this was intentional?

By Renzil D

•

Jun 27, 2021

I loved the structured approach Nancy has taken to illustrate various tools and techniques that are required for this course. However I was not impressed at the level of the quizes and questions that were phrased out. This comparison is only and only with another specialisation that I undertook with other course offering of Alex Cowan where there is a structutred approach with great assignments and questions again the plus point about AWIT is that the content had great tools and techniques like TAM, SAM, SOM / Competitor analysis /OKRs which was missing from Alex's course. Hence I would recommend this course along with Alex Cowan's to compliment each other.

By Andrea U

•

Feb 15, 2021

This was not only one of the best courses in PM, but also one of the best courses I took on Coursera. The content is very engaging; the hands-on experience you can get through practical assignments is very valuable. I'm new to the PM so I gained lot of valuable insight and hands-on skills. The only suggestion for improvement would be around peer-to-peer evaluation. In case you a student doesn't complete assignment in the correct way or something is missing and they receive 0 for evaluation, it would be good to also provide constructive feedback so they understand better what they need to do to improve. In many cases constructive feedback is what is missing.

By Rebecca G

•

Oct 17, 2020

Thanks for a great course! I feel like this was a great overview of the many aspects of product management. In the beginning, I was a bit nervous as my current role is not defined as product management, but have come to learn that product management includes a lot of the foundational considerations that come with working towards a commercial strategy, so I'm not starting from zero.

It would be great to dive deeper into the technical requirements for product managers, including more focus on how to really analyse and understand user needs, identify roadblocks and opportunities to resolve user challenges, etc. I hope that's coming up in the next course!

By Ritu A

•

May 13, 2021

My learning experience of 4 weeks for "The Business of Product Management-I" has been very interesting. It has helped me to connect with product management not only for the concepts but also understand the difference between project management vs product management in terms of vision and strategy. The biggest highlight of these 4 weeks was the assignment for "Market Segmentation of the product " using the theory of TAM,SAM, and SOM. I am looking forward to the next course in this specialization. Another highlight of the course was watching the videos by folks who have been game changers in their product management journey. Thank you!

By Laura M

•

Nov 2, 2022

A solid foundation in what product management is and what the expectations are for the role. The mix of activities (watching Nancy explain things, reading, doing assignments, quizzes) is helpful, even if the practice of student review often doesn't work well (it's very common that links to submissions don't function). The quizzes can me maddening (asking things that haven't been covered or super strange phrasing and double negatives), but overall I have learnt a great deal about product management. And it's nice to dust off some old skills with creating personas, writing press releases, and doing competitive analysis.

By Naila E H

•

Jul 10, 2022

- The quizzes had questions that seemed unrelated to the goal of the course and that was frustrating

- learning new content and tools and how to apply on products is useful and interesting

- Referencing Elad Gil's reading that implies that a project manager's job is JUST to run a schedule is insulting and shows ignorance about what project managers do. Job functions vary largely between different organization and I suggest that reading should be replaced with something that focuses on product management without being critical and downplaying other jobs.

By Vanessa V

•

Jun 3, 2022

The different aspects of what a PM does were eye-opening to me. Also, already possesing an MS degree in marketing from a business school had prepared me for a couple of the exercises/assigmnments in this course; the rest of the assignments were very educational. Something I do not like and do not agree with is the peer grading process in general because the questions are either yes or no and I don't really think peers should be judging each other's work. I only expect to be graded by the expert in the industry, and that would be the instructor.

By Alexa L

•

Dec 17, 2020

I've really enjoyed taking this course. It's been a great jumpstart into Product Management. However, I'd like more information on the concepts we're learning. There are a handful of concepts and vocabulary that is introduced, but not defined clearly. They're defined more in terms of examples than actual definitions to reference when completing the assignments. This would help me and I'm sure others understand these principles better. Otherwise, this course has given me more confidence going down this career path.

By Chaitanya P

•

Mar 14, 2021

Pros:

I feel more confident and excited about Product management. Confident when I got to know that I will learn everything from scrum to agile etc and also where I found out while making customer personas and other tasks that it is not that difficult.

cons:

I would really like to have some notes or slides after every week because taking notes on Coursera is actually a tedious process and leads to loss of motivation, also, writing notes yourself in also makes it slower and excitement and motivation brushes off.

By Kendra A

•

Mar 13, 2022

Suggesting to give instructions on how folks can copy /paste links to view-only documents in Google Suite when the Coursera Honor Code doesn't allow for copy/paste. I've given a suggestion in my last assignment because I was given a zero (0) because the peer reviewer didn't take the time to figure out how to copy/paste due to this issue. Also - I know it is time consuming, though given AWIP changed to AWIT it may be a good idea to rerecord or adjust videos to include the new branding.

By Anastasia T

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Aug 18, 2021

Great basic course. I really enjoyed doing exercises. What could be better: lector could speak more instead of reading the material and it could make a course more vivid. Also there is a bug with viewing assignments of other students: when they post a link it's not clicable and it's impossible to copy to put in a browser so it's impossible to open though and rate then. I've left few reports on it but I don't think somebody fixed it.

By Satish M S

•

Jan 20, 2024

Provides an insight with concrete real world examples, accompanied by excellent assignments that helped enhance the understanding. Specifically customer personas, customer journey, competitive analysis. Couple of improvement areas: a) Practice quiz: some questions seem to test memory/analytics than the understanding. b) Individual modules of the course are excellent, but I felt that flow/structure could be better streamlined