Product School

There's no real school for Product Management, but I think all PMs know that working with industry experts is the best way to gain that key PM skill. Although the content of the PLC course was decent (it's a lot of information you can find elsewhere for much less cost). The benefit really comes from working with a great instructor. Navin Nair taught our class and I really enjoyed his teaching style. He ensured we had a good class discussion around different topics, didn't just "talk about the slides" but brought some really applicable real-life examples. The exercises we did he also ensured to create we all presented and discussed the different outcomes. 

Not sure how Product School has such raving reviews. The majority of the learning takes place virtually via videos and slides. The content is informative but the online learning platform is not super user friendly which is surprising for a school that supposedly is specialized in tech product mgmt. The 36.5 hours of instructor-led learning promised in the course brochure are not really instructor led (it's you working on a group project for 90+ minutes of each 120 minute class). The project canvases in Mural are poorly designed and not explained well. (Design and communication should be baseline for this space, so I'm confused again as to why the school does not practice what it sells). I also found it frustrating that one of my team members did not collaborate well. Because of the structure of the class, I was stuck with them throughout. The one plus was that I was able to use the language from the syllabus and course content to boost my resume, but in retrospect, I wish I had just signed up for Coursera or another option at the fraction of the cost. Really not worth the $5K price tag.

I have thoroughly enjoyed my live PMC sessions with my classmates, project team members and the instructor Ronke Majekodunmi. Before I enrolled in her class, I thoroughly researched all instructors on the syllabus. I wanted to find someone who looked like me so that I could see myself in that role. She was the only one on that list and it has been a fantastic experience being a learner in her class. Ronke breathed life into the lectures, PowerPoints, and videos by providing us with real life examples, chunks of wisdom and advice, encouragement, and perspective. I also enjoyed the additional recommended resources she provided throughout the course that added additional context to the lectures. My journey would not have been possible without the exceptional support, guidance, and communication from our instructor. I highly recommend enrolling in her class and listening to her podcast!

My experience with The Product School was great! The course did a good job of ramping the student up from the basics of product development to the eventual final project. The course is supplemented with the product schools own book that is a great reference for when you don't understand a concept. My Instructor, Farhaz Karmali had a strong background in Product Management and could pull examples from his own experience when teaching us. He's great when explaining different concepts of PM and even gave us helpful feedback before and after our final projects. All in all a great experience. 

 February 8th, 2020 marked a very important journey in expanding my expertise in my career as a Product Manager. My experience at Product school has been a pretty amazing to say the least.  I would like to give a special thanks to my Instructor Dr. Joel Palathinkal, Dr. Joel is a very influential person. He always made me think out of the box and innovative.  What is awesome about him is that he does not give you a yes or no answer, he introduces the answer as storytelling and make you deduce the correct answer for your question. I once asked Dr. Joel how can get useful feedback from customers in order to come-up with a monetization plan, instead of throwing an answer at me, Dr. Joel asked the class a few questions and was able to filter out few people and then he introduced these people to a product and while Dr. Joel was presenting this product this select group was really engage and were actually willing to pay a certain subscription fee. Instead of Dr. Joel telling me filter out the correct audience for your product and then you are able to ask them how much they would pay, Dr. Joel actually showed me a live example for how this should be done.  I will definitely miss Dr. Joel classes, and I would highly recommend him as an instructor for my friends and anyone interested in joining Product School. 

It's been a very interesting journey. Because the program and the instructor "Vishal" were exactly what I needed to bring together my experience into focus and make a significant impact on my role and with my team in a very short time.
The structure of the course is designed very well, and the selection of the instructor worked very well for me. 
Vishal has deep experience that he was generous in sharing with us. In addition to he managed to create a good atmosphere where everyone got to share and learn from each other.
Overall this was a superb experience that I would recommend to everyone looking to become a product leader.

Product School is certainly a unique concept. Course is designed near to perfect and addresses all areas of product management in a nutshell and is presented thoroughly within the short duration. Classes are more of a workshop model which is great and there is so much to learn, not just by doing your own project but also listening to what others in the class present and share.

Nim (Nimrod Fox), our instructor is an excellent mentor. Listening to his professional experience, including how he handles day to day challenges as a PM and his career path to product management was such a motivation. He makes you think about "The problem". There were multiple instants when I was constantly focusing on the solution (typical engineering mindset) but Nim pushed me each time, to wear the product hat and strengthen my opportunity hypothesis instead.

I would definitely recommend PS to anyone new to product management or someone who is looking to excel as an effective PM

I spent the last 8+ weeks focusing on my software and product management skills at Product School.  Logan Hutchingson was my instructor that was excellent.  He taught the details on how to become a great PM.  But, he also took you on daily issues he faces and how he addressed them.  The role playing was very beneficial.  I also gained great feedback on my interview skills and how to better prepare for my interivews.  Logan was very informative on the product process, how to deal with the many aspects of launches and the class is focused on being a great PM.  After the class was finished I am well prepared to launch software products and have some interivews with Fortune 100 firms.  Great job Logan and Product School.

I took Product School Silicon Valley April-June 2018, our instructor Teesh is a very knowledgeable Product Manager with over a decade or experience.  For anyone who is thinking about switching fields to product, I highly recommend Product School.  For someone with little to no experience with product management specifically, I am now clear about what the role entails, who I will be working with, what I will be working on, on how to be successful in the role.  There are many hands-on activities that put you in the shoes of a real-life PM and forces you to work with your peers and articulate your ideas, such as writing a PRD, user stories, Go-to-market Strategies...  Teesh was also very experienced and helped guide us through these activities by helping us think the way a PM should.  All in all, it was a great experience for me with a high-quality instructor and very good material for educating those interested in exploring Product Management.

Course: 8 week long Software Product Management on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, from March to May 2018.
 
Location: Santa Monica, CA 
Parking note: For those driving there, several public lots are available free for the first 1.5 hours. Classes run 2.5 hours though so expect to pay between $3 – $5 per class depending on how early you arrive and how late you stick around after class.

Instructor: Rich Headley, currently a PM at Cornerstone OnDemand.
Rich is very knowledgable, engaging, and covered all the relevant course topics on the syllabus. He also took time to address additional questions and concepts during class. I especially liked the way he applied PM concepts to real-world anecdotes and connected them to what we were learning.

Product School learnings: To get the most out of PS, you’ll need to put in more effort beyond doing the assignments.

• Participate in class.
• Get to know your classmates. 
• Take advantage of the multitude of meet-up opportunities.
• Dive into the Slack community.

​By the end of this course you will learn what you need to know to develop a new feature or product from idea to prototype and present it, using any number of the PM tools discussed along the way.

They are always looking for feedback to make this program better and encourage interaction, which I appreciate. As far my evaluation of the school itself, there’s always room for improvement in a relatively new tech business learning program geared toward professionals. However I firmly believe that with instructors like Rich there it will continue to get better and better with each class.

I look forward to using what I’ve learned from this course in my career.

I attended the 8 week Software Product Management Certification Course which was held at Denver. 

This is one of the best courses that I have ever taken in my professional life. The course content was very apt and to the point. The best part of the course was it was not all instructor lectures and slides alone. Every class had a hands on practice material to be done in class as a group or as an individual. Also the homework assignments were very insightful and helped me develop on the concepts that I learned in class. The Slack channel is really helpful. Also I liked the fact that the class was really small. Just around 10 students which helped each one of us get personal attention from the instructor.

Our instructor was Ken Furie, who is the Head of Product and Technical Strategy at Gloo at Boulder, Colorado. Ken made the class really interesting and enjoyable. His informal approach to the class made all of us very comfortable from Day 1. Every class was less lecture and more of a group discussion. Ken was extremely patient in answering all our questions, however silly they may be. Also he kept up the subtle humor, which all the students appreciated and enjoyed very much. Ken is a very positive person who is really passionate about products and that reflects in his instructor mode as well. Also his knowledge and experience in the Product space speaks for itself. He also helped us prepping up our resumes and personal stories. Discussed the Do's and Dont's in interviews and really prepared us with confidence to attend any interviews. I would any day attend another session with Ken anytime.