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How to be a Phenomenal Product Manager

Based on the best-selling book The Phenomenal Product Manager, this is the only course in the world that teaches you how to dramatically increase your effectiveness and productivity as a product manager.

Course Overview

Have you ever wondered what makes one product manager good, yet another one truly phenomenal? In many organizations there seem to be one or two product managers that stand out FAR above the crowd. What is it that they do that is different than their peers? And as a product manager (or a manager with a team of product managers) how can you learn this, rise above the crowd and significantly increase the influence you have over your product’s success?

How to be a Phenomenal Product Manager is an intensive one-day hands-on seminar that teaches this – how to be dramatically more effective and productive as a product manager. Based on the best-selling book (top 150 in Amazon business category) by Brian Lawley, CEO & Founder of the 280 Group, this course incorporates the techniques and strategies observed over his twenty-five year product management career and is based on the ten best product managers he worked with.

There are many courses that teach the fundamentals of the product management profession –gathering and prioritizing the voice of the customer and market requirements, building product roadmaps, becoming an expert on the market, customers and competition, overseeing every aspect of the product to ensure it’s success, etc. But these skills often aren’t nearly enough to be a great product manager. You must also be able to prioritize effectively against dozens of daily demands for your time, influence everyone from sales people to engineers to customers (without formal authority) and be the de facto leader for making your product delight your customers and succeed in the marketplace.

The course consists of seven modules, each with lecture, extensive discussion and hands-on exercises. Additionally, throughout the day students will be creating an action plan for how to apply what they have learned when they leave the course. The result is that they have the skills and plan in place to immediately be more effective in their day-to-day product management work.

Topics that are covered include:

The Role (and non-role) of Product Management
Product Management Productivity
Negotiation and Mediation for Product Managers
Working More Effectively with your Engineering Team
Getting Sales People on your Side
Accelerating your Product Management career
Becoming a Phenomenal Product Manager

What You Get From the Course

Intensive lecture with real-world examples from experienced instructors
How to avoid common mistakes and leverage solutions and approaches that have already been developed and proven to succeed
Hands-on exercises and in-class development of personal plans
How to apply your new skills and with a specific plan of action for improving in critical areas
Highly-interactive, small classes with extensive feedback from the instructor and other students
Gain an increased level of confidence about how to do your job along with concrete and specific strategic and tactical action items to apply

Course Syllabus

Module One: The role of product management

The role of Product Management varies widely from one company to another, and is often misunderstood by the teams that a product manager interacts with and the executives at their company. The resulting lack of clarity means that product managers often do things that are outside of the scope of their job role, resulting in lost time and effort on things like strategy and tactics to make their products successful. This module presents the roles of a typical product manager and includes exercises to help the product manager capture what they are doing today and determine what needs to change. It also discusses how to communicate this internally at their company. And as a result of the exercises the student will have a clear plan for clarifying and communicating their role when they leave the class.

In this module students will create a plan for clarifying their roles and responsibilities and will learn:

Common responsibilities of product managers based on worldwide best practices across a range of companies
Tasks and responsibilities that are not appropriate for product management
How to clarify and communicate their role to appropriate counterparts

Module Two: Product management productivity- how to get twice as much done in half the time

As a product manager, you will always have far more work than you can possibly accomplish. Between thinking strategically and driving things related to your products from a high level, to executing the day-to-day tactical work required for product success, you will have a full list of to-do items and plenty of requests that go unfulfilled. This presentation will show you strategies and tactics for being more productive, with the goal of increasing your output and freeing up your time for high-level tasks, while at the same time reducing your overall stress level.

In this module students will create a plan for significantly boosting their productivity and will learn:

Strategies for capturing all messages, requests and ideas and becoming more organized
How to prioritize their master daily task list to ensure they are working on what is important while at the same time reducing their overall stress level
Techniques for increasing the amount of free time they have every day so that they can focus on the critical strategic issues for their products

Module Three: Mediation and negotiation for product managers

The world’s greatest product managers mediate and negotiate constantly with and between multiple stakeholder groups. Whether it is two groups who disagree and need to find some common ground through mediation, or one group that the product manager needs to negotiate with and influence to get them to do what is best for the product’s success, this module teaches the foundational skills to succeed with a variety of stakeholders.

In this module students will learn:

What causes conflict and how to read people in order to resolve the conflict
How to mediate between multiple stakeholders with differing agendas to come up with solutions that best meet each party’s needs
How to negotiate with your engineering team and others in order to achieve optimum results for your product.

Module Four: How to work more effectively with your engineering team

Working effectively with your engineers is one of the key factors in product management success. To build great products you have to understand how to influence, motivate and collaborate with them or all of your other efforts may be wasted.

In this module students will create a plan for working more effectively with their engineers and will learn:

How to establish yourself as the market and customer expert
Ways to increase credibility with your team
How to read and interact with different personality types
Ways to subtly influence your engineers to get them to help you achieve your objectives.

Module Five: How to work more effectively with your sales team

Salespeople can be a Product Manager’s best friend or their worst nightmare. If they are on your side, believe in your product and are given the tools and information to succeed they can be the difference between a winning product and a failing product. However, if you don’t provide them with what they need or nurture the relationships they can inundate you with questions, make unreasonable demands or even ignore your product or refuse to sell it.

In this module students will create a plan for leveraging their sales people and will learn:

How to get their sales people on their side and get them excited and properly armed to sell their product
Ways to create leverage so that sales people don’t constantly ask for favors and assistance closing sales
What motivates a sales team and how to tap into it to ensure your product succeeds

Module Six: Accelerating your product management career- how to manage and advance your career path

Product Management and Product Marketing can be an excellent career path that opens many doors and opportunities. Yet if you aren’t careful and don’t manage your career path and development you may end up stagnating or finding yourself in a job or position that you weren’t planning on. And if you don’t have a plan for advancement your ability and desire to be a phenomenal product manager will suffer.

In this module students will create a plan for advancing their career and will learn:

Ways to determine what their career goals are
How to find a mentor
Strategies for working more effectively with their bosses

Module Seven: Becoming a phenomenal product manager

Product Managers that stand out above the crowd and are much more effective have a common set of traits and characteristics in terms of how they do their job and what they focus on. This module covers the twelve traits that every product manager needs to focus on and develop in order to achieve excellence.

In this module students will create a plan for what areas they need to develop and will learn:

What the twelve common traits are
How to change the perception of themselves in their organization
Ways to begin acting like a leader and an even better product manager

Pricing

$695 per person
All attendees receive:
- Printed copies of all materials
- All 280 books provided electronically
  - The Phenomenal Product Manager
  - Expert Product Management
  - Agile Excellence for Product Managers
  - 42 Rules of Product Management
- Certificate of course completion

Note: Fees may be tax deductible – check with your tax professional. All expenses of continuing education taken to maintain and improve professional skills are tax deductible according to U.S. Treasury Regulation 1.162-5.