Best Product Management Courses That are Worth Considering Today

In most organizations, product management is a leading skill that often redirects a professional towards leadership roles. But becoming a successful product manager requires a strong product-driven mindset and the confidence to grow single-handedly and scale up products and brands, which often comes from product management courses and professional on-the-job training.  

Most of these product management certification courses are for beginners and intermediate-level product managers having 1-5 years of experience. Also, depending upon your career goals, you can select these free and paid product management certification courses based on the objectives that they deliver and the efforts they require. 

Best Product Management Courses by Leading Course Providers: 

1. Brand and Product Management on Coursera [Free Course with paid certification]

Objective: To help you learn the latest product and brand development strategies and gain the ability to define the right metrics for determining the success of the product/brand. 

What you’ll learn here?

• Formulate product and brand strategies to make a product/brand successful
• Steps and plan to expand the product offering
• Different ways to develop and manage brand architecture and brand equity 

Efforts – 15 hours

Rating – 4.7 stars 

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2. Digital Product Management Specialization on Coursera by University of Virginia [Free Course with paid certification]

Objective: This specialization is for experienced product managers looking forward to developing their own digital industry products. 

What you’ll learn here?

This specialization includes five product management courses:

• Digital Product Management: Modern Fundamentals
• Agile Meets Design Thinking
• Hypothesis-Driven Development
• Agile Analytics
• Managing an Agile Team

Efforts –  5 months (approximately 3 hours/week)

Rating – 4.7 stars

3. MicroMasters Program in Digital Product Management by Boston University on edX [Paid certification course]

Objective: This Product Management MicroMasters program helps managers learn the latest tools and techniques to develop new product roadmaps. It also outlines popular platform-based agile product strategies. 

What you’ll learn here?

• Object-oriented thinking to develop innovative products
• Latest digital process and data analytics tools
• Agile and lean management practices
• Popular market testing methods
• Product management life cycle
• Steps to drive digital business innovation

Efforts –  8 months (4-7 hours per week, per course)

Rating – 4.5 stars

To learn more about product management, read our blog – what is Product Management?

4. Advanced Product Management: Vision, Strategy & Metrics on Udemy [Paid Course]

Objective: This course will help you learn the skills and techniques that successful product managers use in their day-to-day working lives. The course offers real-world examples to show you how to execute each approach. On completion of this course, you will have understood the different product management tools to make more profitable decisions in your product manager role.

What you’ll learn here?

• Difference between vision and strategy
• OKRs to track progress
• Product development hierarchies
• Agile road mapping
• Cohort anomalies
• Difference between a leading and a lagging metric

Efforts – 5.5 hours of on-demand video

Rating – 4.5

5. Product Management Fundamentals on edX [Free Course with paid certification]

Objective: Here in this product management course, you will learn about the typical roles of a product manager, along with popular frameworks and product management strategies. 

What you’ll learn here?

• Product manager roles and responsibilities
• Ways to manage innovative product teams
• Fundamentals of marketing
• Understanding the customer development process

Efforts –  4 weeks (2-3 hours per week)

Rating – 4.5 stars

Check out popular Product Roadmap and Strategy Courses here. 

6. Data Product Manager a Nanodegree Program by Udacity [Paid Course with certification]

Objective: It offers a data-driven approach that helps product managers provide an excellent product experience to the users. 

What you’ll learn here?

• Ways to apply data science to product management
• Find solutions for real-world data-related problems.
• Define KPIs to enhance the product and its design

Note: This program is only for those who are well-versed with data analysis and have product development/management experience.

Efforts –3 months (approx. 10 hours per week)

Rating – 4.85 stars

Explore popular Data Science Courses. 

7. Product Management 101 on Udemy [Heavy discounts available and offers certification]

Objective: This course will help you become a strategic product manager by learning some of the best product management strategies and creating breakthrough products. 

What you’ll learn here?

• What is the role of a product manager and how to transform it into a strategic role
• Insights to effectively conduct market analysis, customer analysis, and competitive analysis for enhancing the quality and usability of the existing product
• Product development strategies along with applying the strategy diamonds approach to their product.
• Product development lifecycle

Efforts –5 hours of on-demand video

Rating – 4.5 stars (taken by 40K+ professionals)

8. Customer Insights: New Product Development Orientation on Coursera by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [Paid Course with certification]

Objective: This CIPD specialization (Customer Insights and New Product Development) will equip product managers with hands-on experience and the latest tools to gather customer insight to identify develop new product opportunities. 

What you’ll learn here?

• What exactly defines the success or failure of a product
• Different qualitative and quantitative research methods to understand customer’s needs and wants
• Product development stages
• How to identify customer’s needs and turn them into a functional product
• Develop a design thinking approach to identify customer touch-points and mapping their experience
• Creating customer journey maps

Efforts –23 hours

Rating – 4.5 stars

9. Product Management Certification Program by Duke Corporate Education on upGrad [Paid Course with certification] 

Objective: To help aspirants start a successful career in product management and build a product roadmap through user research, prototyping, and product analysis.

What you’ll learn here?

• Market research for new product development
• Quantitative and qualitative research methods for gathering client requirements
• Web & App Product Designing
• Building B2B Product Demos
• Testing and MVP validating
• Product analysis
• Product marketing and GTM (Go to market) strategy
• Agile and waterfall product development techniques
• Popular product management tools like
  • Marvel
  • Wireframe CC
  • Jira
  • Mixpanel
  • InVision

Efforts –6 months (8-10 hours per week) 

Rating – 4.7 stars

Note: This course is about to start this month and offers a valid DUKE CE Certification along with placement support.

10. Rethinking the Product Development Process on Alison [Free Course with certification]

Objective: To learn functional strategies to optimize the product development process. It also helps assess customer and market risks, which most of the product managers and entrepreneurs miss out.  

What you’ll learn here?

• How to re-question the product development process
• How to assess customer’s needs and the associated risks
• What should be the customer development process
• How to not fall for common product marketing and branding mistakes 
• How to quickly act on customer discovery

Efforts –2-3 hours

Rating – 4.4 stars

11. Product Management with Lean, Agile and System Design Thinking on edX [Free Course with paid certification]

Objective: This course will teach you the key frameworks for decision-making based on both economic and organizational considerations.

What you’ll learn here?

• Product line planning and road mapping alternatives
• Alternative approaches for lean, agile, and waterfall development
• Launch a product and create a go-to-market strategy
• How to take ownership of product-related profit (or loss) over various life cycle stages

Efforts – 6 weeks (4-8 hours per week)

Also Read: Six Sigma vs Lean Six Sigma: What’s the difference?

12. Data Product Manager by Udacity [Paid Course with certification]

Objective: In this course, you will learn the product management skills and build data products that position customers and businesses to thrive.

What you’ll learn here?

• Use market data to amplify product development
• Learn how to apply data science techniques, data engineering processes, and market experimentation tests
• Develop data pipelines and warehousing strategies

Efforts – 3 months (10 hours per week)

Rating – 4.8 stars

The Parting Note

Gone are the days when many professionals used to think that they don’t require a dedicated product management certification course to become a product manager! Today having one on your name can offer multiple benefits from gaining hands-on experience in developing a successful product advancing your career. 

All the above-listed courses are flexible to take and give you the power to handle your products better. So, consider your options carefully and pick a product development course that meets most of your long-term career aspirations.